Skepticism

EVENTS

Jesus F. Christ.

Ben Radford has taken the next step in sleaze, dumping all of his and Karen Stollznow’s mutual correspondence to the web, along with various other documents to demonstrate that yes, they once had a relationship, that Stollznow has had some turbulent relationships with others, etc., etc., etc. None of it really matters — does he think that somehow having once had a relationship, it means he can never ever be guilty of harassment ever again?

But I just want to mention one piece of ‘evidence’ he has released to the world. It’s a selfie he took of himself, shirtless, in bed with a woman. Radford has a smug smirk on his face; the woman is covering her face with her hand, clearly not wanting any part of this exhibition. Radford has commissioned an expert in photographic analysis to compare her hand to Stollznow’s hand in other photos, to ‘prove’ that it is her. Note what he has done: he has taken a picture of a woman in an intimate situation, clearly against her wishes, and has now posted it to the web, with evidence to identify her.

His lawyer sent all this to me some time ago, as part of his effort to intimidate me, so I’m pretty sure this maneuver is just fine with his lawyer, J. Noble Dogshit or whoever. If he doesn’t have a case, the next best thing is to extort a surrender with a scorched earth policy.

I wonder if the people high fiving over this would catch the obvious bait/switch / goal posts moving / ad hom / any other linty of logical faux pas this fucker committed if it was done by someone outside the group or if they are oblivious hanger ons who would be lost and bamboozled without a skeptic to shepherd them

The sad part about this is that there will, without a single doubt, be a large contingent of similarly socially-stunted man-children applauding this.

Where the fuck is the logic behind “In defence of accusations that I acted inappropriately towards Ms Stollznow or in any way that was contrary to her wishes, here’s a picture I took of us in bed, without her consent, which I am now presenting to the entire internet, which proves that we were in a relationship, which of course implies that any and all advances I made after the end of the relationship were totes legit!”

Radford and his lawyer either have some strategy I don’t comprehend or they’re as fucking thick as short, wet planks.

How exactly? She’s never denied that she was initially flattered by his attentions. So what difference does him “proving” that they had a fling that she’s never denied make?

At some stage, Stollznow told Radford to leave her alone. The point where he decided to continue his attentions anyway is when he became a sexual harasser. What happened before she told him to leave her alone is beside the point.

Radford is disgusting, and his lawyer is even worse, because he’s meant to have formal training in knowing better.

I’m reminded of Rachel Maddow’s dramatic reading of the lawyers’ report commissioned by Chris Christie (and paid for with public NJ money): the relationship between Bridget Kelley and Bill Stepien had ended, “apparently at the behest of Mr. Stepien…” (I have no idea what actually happened in that case, but the report and its presentation were a reminder of how confident lawyers can be in playing to sexist culture.)

The reason Radford and/or his lawyers deploy such tactics is because they work. Predators who commit felony sexual assault routinely go free precisely because of this “logic”: she had sex therefore she said yes to anything and everything ever.

Why did Radscum even mention the DV arrest? It seems irrelevant to the case.

Because if he can prove that she was a gangsta thug slut who gave people the finger was nuts and smoked drugs totally had sex with him, then it proves that he justifiably stood his ground didn’t harass her and if he had, she wanted it.

here’s a picture I took of us in bed, without her consent, which I am now presenting to the entire internet, which proves that we were in a relationship, which of course implies that any and all advances I made after the end of the relationship were totes legit!”

I think your statement looked a little better in your earlier draft, when it was written:

here’s a picture I took of us in bed, without her consent, which I am now presenting to the entire internet, which proves that I would never violate her consent. QED.

In one of the email he himself has posted she says that “too much has happened between us”. She clearly wanted for him to leave her alone and he quite clearly shows that he didn’t comply.

irisvanderpluym #25:

Predators who commit felony sexual assault routinely go free precisely because of this “logic”: she had sex therefore she said yes to anything and everything ever.

Probably. But also because courts are not public opinion – they can only convict if they see guilt beyond any reasonable doubt*. As long as there isn’t any hard evidence of wrong doings, then he can’t be convicted. From all the courts care, he could go and butcher all of humanity, but if no one witnesses him, then he’s as innocent as a baby.

*It’s true for the judge system, but I assume your jury systems works similarly.

Interesting that more or less concurrent with Secular Women having an organized twitter conversation on #conharrassment which was trolled/messed with by douchebags, this website comes to light. Dudeskeptics are busy tonight.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend, Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

He probably isn’t. In the US there is no tort of privacy violation. Statutory prohibitions largely apply to surreptitious recording, theft of content, or situations of legal duty (trustees, etc). There is no theft of content if you send something to someone. An e-mail sent to me belongs to me, just as if you wrote a letter on paper and sent it to me, the letter would belong to me. It’s a gift you give to me no less than if you sent me a pound of tea (and please do, btw). Otherwise google implementing a forward button on e-mail would put them at risk of aiding privacy violation.

None of the legal principles seem to be violated, though individual statutes can vary highly with jurisdiction and there’s no telling in advance exactly which jurisdiction’s laws might apply.

Gave this month’s earnings, and as long as my financial situation doesn’t tank horribly, I intend to continue donating until Radford has been utterly and completely crushed by Karen’s lawyer. I’m sick of this shit. I’m sick of these jackasses. Time to send them a clear and unforgettable message regarding our unwillingness to allow them to continue preying on people without consequence.

I hope Karen’s found the best in the business, someone who savors a tall glass of defeated harasser tears each morning.

I tried to read Radford’s defense page with an open mind. No matter what, I want to do my best to be fair and challenge my views on controversial subjects. But that website comes across like the Time Cube guy. Threads of “evidence” spiral out all over the place. There’s a pedantic focus on debunking details that he never really connects to a broader context. He constantly says Karen accused him of things, but never quotes or links to the specific accusation in context. He peppers his descriptions with document dumps and links to other screeds. Why are the documents and links relevant? What is he trying to prove? Hell if I can tell.

I really expected to at least feel persuaded of something – to have my view of the situation challenged on some level. But whatever argument he’s trying to make is totally incoherent. It’s seems to me to be purely irrelevant and inept character assassination.

After reading his own words in his own defense, Radford seems like more of a creeper than ever, and I just feel gross.

they once had a relationship, that Stollznow has had some turbulent relationships with others, etc., etc., etc. None of it really matters — does he think that somehow having once had a relationship, it means he can never ever be guilty of harassment ever again?</blockquote?

No he does not think he can not be guilty of harassment because of his relationship with the accuser — he IS implying that she is accusing him; just to attack him, for some petty argument they had during the relationship. Like taking that pic without asking her first. That it made her so angry she decided to get back at him by accusing him of harassment etc. He is not claiming innocence, but pointing at her as the liar, by trying to show she had motivation to lie.

There is the fact that the documents that he was disciplined for (the emails) at CFI, and which have been the basis for endless numbers of attacks on him seem to be forged. Badly. That’s why the lawsuit is not just for defamation but for fraud. It is basically unthinkable how those copy and paste jobs she presented will stand up in court, honestly. The judge is going to want to see her email accounts like Ben presented his and compare. That’s what will determine this.

My understanding that photos of her enthusiastically consenting at a time she says they were not involved are not included on the website. I suspect they will be seen in court, however.

I smell another donation the KS defense fund, hopefully to get enough for a counter-suit for a million bucks or so. Enough to get proper and circumspect behavior from a proven bully until the legal systems renders a verdict.

In all the documents he’s posted, are there any referencing the CFI investigation? They hired an outside investigator (at considerable cost), and my understanding is that Radford was suspended as a result.

If Radford’s evidence is so airtight and convincing, why didn’t the investigator agree? I know CFI wouldn’t discuss the details, but it doesn’t sound like there’s anything to stop Radford from doing so, and if any of that investigation were in his favor, wouldn’t he have included that? Or was this investigator so incompetent that they fell for “badly forged” emails?

I agree with those questioning the quality of his legal representation. Who on earth would suggest this course of action to a client? I’m equally surprised that they would send the information to PZ who is not a party to the action, and so what would be the imagine benefit. As others have pointed out, sending details of your relationship to third parties, and posting details of the relationship when you have clearly been asked to stop, seems to me only to be continuing to harass, only in a MUCH more public and therefore less defensible way.

He clearly does not understand that asking someone to stop a behaviour is not in anyway negated by the fact that they may have previously been ok with that behaviour. That it doesn’t matter if she engaged with him a minute ago, if she has since indicated she no longer wishes to. Given that she has made that clear, it seems obvious to me that his behaviour continues to be harassment. His recourse should have been only to the courts if he wanted to avoid that.

I mean , really. I understand that lawyers are mercenries an’ all, but having a client like this has got to be painful! This isn’r “phyrric” this is “sophoclean”

Except Radford was never that great to begin with. The gods only allow mortals with the stature of Achilles to fuck up this badly. (And usually they have a Sophocles or Shakespeare standing around to comment on it!) This is more like something that Hera’s cat is going to kick dirt over in the olympian litterbox. Eeew.

I ventured to the place that shall not be linked to see what the hell it was all about. He seems to be basically trying to say that there’s no way he could have harassed her, because she didn’t act like she hated his guts the minute he did it. She was friendly to him after the first instance of reported harassment, see. Because there’s never in history been an example of someone grinning and bearing it to not rock the boat after harassment happens, or trying to convince themselves that that thing that happened couldn’t have been the harassment that it really felt like, and surely they were overreacting, right? And it’s not like there were other factors to consider, like the amount of extra harassment she would be bringing down on herself by reporting it right then. And he keeps conveniently glossing over the fact that her public report of it did not name him at all. It was other people who recognized his sleazy behavior and put his name to it.

Because “enthusiastic consent” also means “having a model release” for public display. Except where it doesn’t. Hint to photographers who keep such images, that’s what truecrypt partitions are for: to protect you.

There is the fact that the documents that he was disciplined for (the emails) at CFI, and which have been the basis for endless numbers of attacks on him seem to be forged.

Then how do you defend all those non-forged emails posted?

The judge is going to want to see her email accounts like Ben presented his and compare. That’s what will determine this.

Then why publish these emails at all? If Radford’s case is so airtight, why didn’t he just sit tight and wait for the trial, instead of torching his reputation and setting himself up for a countersuit?

My non-God, man, you call yourself a skeptic yet you can’t spot an obvious attempt at poisoning the well? Hang your head in shame.

I’m equally surprised that they would send the information to PZ who is not a party to the action, and so what would be the imagine benefit.

It was intimidation, plain and simple. He was trying to compel me to take down posts that were critical of Radford, so he sent me this mountain of crap to tell me that their case was sooooo strong, there was no way they could lose.

It really just confirmed to me that Radford was a world class creeper.

I’ve worked with attorneys that are in the situation that Radfords are in, right now. What they do is go “oh, my!” and start researching things even more closely. While they do that, their phones are off the hook, but it’s billable hours. After a while, a goodly while – there’s a phone call that goes, “we are withdrawing from the case and will send you a summary invoice.” And, as Sun Tzu so beautifully puts it, “the rest is the noise signifying defeat”

It would be remarkable if the outside investigator CFI hired to look into this matter initially, for which I’m told they spent in the neighborhood of $40,000, failed to do the basic investigative work that would have detected these e-mails were “badly forged”. Was this fact not available to Radford at that time? Did he thoughtlessly neglect to offer it up in his own defense?

Don’t get cocky. Apparently, Radford’s lawyer has a bit of a reputation as a rabid dog…there’s been some difficulty getting representation because everyone hates to go up against him and deal with the slime. Doing a public data dump to poison the well sounds like exactly the kind of thing this guy would do to win, win, win.

You can also tell what their court case would be. “She’s a slut, she’s mean and vindictive, so she deserves to be punished.” And there are many people who will fall for that.

It would be remarkable if the outside investigator CFI hired to look into this matter initially, for which I’m told they spent in the neighborhood of $40,000, failed to do the basic investigative work that would have detected these e-mails were “badly forged”.

I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Some random poster on the internet who is not emotionally invested in any way in this affair (see what I did there?) told me those emails were totes forged. Badly.

How could you possibly disagree with an essentially random stranger? Why, that’s in such bad taste, your character is now in question! Fie on you! Fie, I say!

I’m withholding judgement on the issue of forgery, because as Adam pointed out, these documents passed the inspection of previous investigators, and the only claim of forgery is so far coming from experts commissioned by Radford to demonstrate that they are forged.

But even if they are, it doesn’t change the fact that there were eyewitnesses, and that Radford is acting like a serious sleaze here — it would be a point that would hurt Stollznow in any court case.

Not really since, in part, it amounts to an affirmative defense. Radford has just done the equivalent of ripping his armor off and running headlong at Achilles yelling “come at me, bro” I don’t know about KS’ lawyers but if CFI’s lawyers are diligent they are now establishing a strategy oriented solely toward protecting CFI (which means Radord’s gonna get a close view of the wheels of the bus really soon)

Mostly’ I’ve worked with corporate litigators who have big $$ at stake, not this kind of stuff. They’d be using Radford as a toothpick by now.

I’m withholding judgement on the issue of forgery, because as Adam pointed out, these documents passed the inspection of previous investigators

With electonic documents, that kind of thing is very cut and dried. You look for source logs (or absence thereof) forwarding logs (ditto) and reciept logs (ditto) and matching file sizes. It’s a complete non-claim.

FWIW if someone needs a computer forensics expert with 25+ year of testifying experience, this is the kind of thing I do pro bono. The server logs will have everything necessary and once it’s shown they match, there’s no need to go further. If I send PZ an email that’s 812 bytes, gmail will get a message that’s 812 bytes from the same address in under a second and we’re done.

Except in cases like these, character assassination works. All Radford has to do is show that he’s the one who has been wronged. That’s all about swaying the jury, assuming he can call into question all the evidence.

Calling her a vindictive slut is an efficient way to question her character. It works. Because juries are primed to accept “vindictive slut” as a bad actor.

I really hope CFI takes an active part of this trial. I gotta admit, I’m not a lawyer, nor have I played one on TV. But I have seen people judged against in trial because they were vindictive sluts.

Yeah, in Georgia, etc. But the bottom line is that when you post pictures of the co-worker you were harassing in flagrante, you’ve just affirmed that you were harassing them. Now you’re down to convincing the Texas crowd that she was asking for it. Meanwhile, if CFI’s attorneys are tracking the problem (which they will be, tomorrow at 8am) they’ll be unreachable for comment until they confer with their client. Their advice will be “Ben, who?”

Why would you forge the date on emails, but not forge the content? If you’re already making something up, why wouldn’t you go hog wild?

But, again, I’d like to point out that we don’t even know that Karen claimed the dates Ben is presenting were the dates the emails were sent on. Or that Karen ever claimed that’s what Ben was disciplined for. Or that Ben actually was disciplined for them. In order to even begin to judge whether or not Ben is correct about the forgery, we have to take him at his word about everything else.

here’s a picture I took of us in bed, without her consent, which I am now presenting to the entire internet, which proves that we were in a relationship, which of course implies that any and all advances I made after the end of the relationship were totes legit!”

I think your statement looked a little better in your earlier draft, when it was written:

here’s a picture I took of us in bed, without her consent, which I am now presenting to the entire internet, which proves that I would never violate her consent. QED.

So now Benji has also confirmed that he isn’t just into sexual harassment, but he’s also a bit of a creepy stalker with severe boundary issues even within a relationship and who feels entitled to sexually harassing people he has had relationships with. Sadly there will be plenty of sexist asses who will read what Radford has exposed and think that it justifies Radford’s actions. I just hope that at least some people outside of this blog realize that this information actually makes Radford look worse.

The assertion that the basis of the findings of CFI’s discipline were “badly” forged emails reflects “badly” upon CFI, if it is true. Oh my goodness.

You seem to have asserted this as a reason why people should not believe Karen Stollznow. Okay. Well then. Would you also agree that, assuming your assertions of forgery are correct, that CFI has shown itself to be lacking in ONE or more of the following areas:
a) inquire skeptically
b) evaluate claims
c) evaluate evidence
d) exercise good judgment?

If so, why should people support an organization which fails miserably on it’s core principles when they are turned inwardly? [If you say “not,” you are a disingenuous, logic-contortionist clown, as by your own assertion they took a serious HR action based upon “badly” forged documents]

I look forward to a) your full-throated defense of an organization which is based on evidence and reason and evaluation of claims with serious consequences which fails to employ those principles successfully in re: HR matters or b) your denunciation of CFI as a failure [or c) some mealy-mouthed bullshit].

In fact, if someone is stupid enough to edit a message in their inbox, and claim they got it from over the network, unless the byte counts and origin match, they may as well just hamme a stake in their own heart.

Do you think Google or UCBerkeley would provide access to their logs in a civil case? If so, that should be easily settled

Google’s compliance office will have all that stuff (on their end) thanks to PATRIOT and good system administration. UCB, ditto. The CSO at Berkeley is actually a friend of mine and I know they keep good logs. :) It’d take a subpoena to pry it out of Berkeley but the FBI could just ask Google nicely for it (actually, the NSA already has that data, but would not be subpoenable)

Sadly (because I personally think system logs are really really cool) none of this stuff ever gets presented as evidence. Because lawyers run like hell away from it – they want to build hypothetical theories that their client didn’t actually send an email reading “I hope you die!” and it’s a bit tough when someone says, “well, server A collected a message message-id=axz0xff567aaaq of 17 characters at 11:59:00.00″ to deliver to server B and server B got a message message-id=axz0xff567aaaq of 17 character at 11:59:00.59 to deliver to user@whatever and dropped it in their in box at 11:59.01.01 So now your client has a message that’s 22 characters on their end-point?

FWIW, just about everything that happens in well-manage systems is logged and leaves a trace. If you open an email message and it’s 17 chars and you close it and it’s 20, that’s gonna be in a system log someplace. Or if a hard drive is told to store a file of 17 chars and then later it reads back 20 chars, that’s in the logs, too. Well-run systems have all those logs and someone like me will be able to ruthlessly and accurately be able to tell a jury exactly when a file was modified and how (because usually sizes change) Or, which also sometimes happen, we tell the jury things about how anyone who was running an email transaction service that didn’t track this kind of stuff correctly was violating PATRIOT and was negligent besides. Or, if it’s a specially delicious case, we get to explain how odd it is that the mail system correctly processed 290,283,349 email messages in a year without garbling one, but this one mail out of millions changed conveniently at a certain exact time when the system administrator happened to be logged in, herp, derp, derp. “Filesystem error” no, sir.

For you skeptics, you should think of computers as highly predictable systems that operate within set laws, and leave ample and obvious warnings when they depart from obeying those laws. There are lots of guys like me who love to figure out why. :)

What I’m saying is that the kind of log data me and my friends deal with never appears in testimony, unfortunately. It’s usually what causes plea bargains. “Cuz some dumbass hacker starts to claim they never altered any data and … uh… never mind, can we plead a lesser charge?

Just de-lurking to point out how hilariously stupid this comment is. He won’t allow linking to it, but it’s not at all hard to find. Hurin, are you aware that URLs that aren’t linked to but that still exist can still be found?! Mind blowing, right?!

Well, he’s sure as hell harassing her now. I wonder what the stalking laws are like in her state? There are places where the cops are quite hip to revenge porn, especially due to recent high-profile cases.

Also, if CFI doesn’t push him off the cliff tomorrow, I, for one, am done with CFI for good. They may wish it were not so, but Radford’s behavior reflects badly on the organization — partly because they did not clearly and publicly repudiate his behavior from the beginning. They are allowing Radford to drag CFI through all the mud in which he so clearly loves to wallow. He’s a “Fellow” — WTF does that mean at CFI? an unbreakable sinecure? What is the matter with the CFI board?

Let’s say that Radford wins, no matter how. The discussions about him on this and other forums are likely to influence the compensation he gets because the lawsuit is in large part about reputation. Discussions like this are, let’s face it, material evidence in his favor if he wins. So you better be damned sure about what you say, because it’s not your ass on the line; it’s Karen’s.

I know you don’t want any links, and I assume discussion of the specifics may be verboten, so please delete this if you prefer.

I will just say that I read a bit of that site. The “documented evidence” does not support the claims he makes. It’s a very baffling thing to read. He will say something to the effect of, “Karen says we broke up because of X, but if you read this e-mail it was obviously because of Y.” You read the email and it contains Dr. Stollznow explaining that they broke up because of X.

I admit that I was morbidly curious, but wow, in addition to being disgusting it’s…very strange.

So, yeah, documentation which included a photograph of an adult couple in a bedroom liaison which appears to have been taken against the woman’s will had NOTHING at all to do with it because you’re fucking telepathic and know this shit. Brilliant deductions, Sherlock!

Let’s say that Radford wins, no matter how. The discussions about him on this and other forums are likely to influence the compensation he gets because the lawsuit is in large part about reputation. Discussions like this are, let’s face it, material evidence in his favor if he wins. So you better be damned sure about what you say, because it’s not your ass on the line; it’s Karen’s.

Your pseudosympathetic thinly-veiled “shut up” is noted and disregarded as coming from a complete shithead.

Fuck the skeptic movement to the ground. Time to move on with my life. It’s important to be skeptical. But it’s completely self-aggrandizing wankery to call yourself a skeptic (i.e. inoculated from unreasonable thoughts or behaviors… yeah, bullshit on that.)

Oh, right, because Radford’s own actions have no effect on his reputation. Pull the other one — it’s got bells on.

Like many others, I have not had to base my opinions of Radford on what others say or write about him. His own behavior and verbal and written statements make it crystal-clear what his character is. There is no need to judge by anything else, whether it’s an accusation or a testimonial. His record stands. I hope I never have to stand near it, on account of the smell.

Where are the inaccuracies? People here, like me, are rightfully appalled at what Radford has just dumped on the web. It’s a blatant attempt to skew public opinion before his case goes to trial, and further, it backfires on him — it makes him look like a real skeevy creep. If he’s in the right, he should be just sitting smug and quiet, ready to unload in court…and here he is, dropping all this stuff on us and everyone else.

We’re not judges, you may notice, nor are we on any jury, nor do most of us have any legal training. So why, you ought to be asking yourself, is your pal Ben playing this peculiar game?

WHY can’t this stuff appear as testimony?
Is it that for every one of you, there is an evil twin tweaking something?

It never has to! Which is good! Because when the system logs start getting introduced, the lawyers on whichever side it is start glaring at their clients and say “We need to talk” and then there’s a meeting and the whole thing is over right then and there.

I was on a case in 2002 where a parent was going to try to claim to a university that the parent’s kid had not logged in using another student’s ID to drop a course so they could sign up for it… And after the DHCP server logs showed the parent’s child’s laptop getting a certain IP address which immediately logged in as a certain student ID and dropped the course, then logged in as another student ID and signed up for it… I was just getting rolling with this incredibly fun analysis of this fascinating sequence of highly unlikely events and… Oooops, “My client would like to discuss a settlement” We seldom appear because the truths we present trigger bigger truths. Does that make sense?

Computers only have value because they are amazingly predictable. The internet is only valuable because it carries email incredibly fast and incredibly accurately. In order to work at all, every transaction that results in a change of state results in multiple changes of state.

I have a buddy who was an expert on a case where someone tried to claim that ZFS must have accidentally altered a file. He got to explain to a lawyer how a file system that had correctly and accurately stored a squadjillion+ files at amazon.com just happened to get one file wrong in a certain specific very lucky way at a certain specific day …. holy shit, it’s like the creationists who get to say “odds of 10^312 against times odds of 10^50 against… .uh, is defense counsel listening to the testimony? Hello?”

Sigh, amazing, Radford really is a piece of shit. You know what, even if it turned out he was telling the truth, that he was being persecuted unfairly, fuck him. He has made it clear what type of person he actually is through his actions and it is clear he is an asshole and creep of amazing magnitude.

As is PZ’s right, being the owner and operator of this-here web-log. Are you concerned that other inquiring minds won’t be able to find Radford’s bizarre little vanity site using one of the many online services which provide the service of searching the entire internet using key words, just because PZ doesn’t want Radford to get clicks via FtB? Heckarooni, it would not surprise me at all to see the link to BR’s self-serving conspiracy-theory sampler in a sticky thread over at Mould Central. Surely that’d reach at least three-quarters of the interested parties.

As for the rest of your comment, which was essentially an ad-hom against Nerd of Redhead: so the fuck what? Nerd’s one person – at least they’d have an excuse for saying similar things all the time. What we’ve had over here in the form of MRA talking points and Slyme/Skepbro regurgitation is so fucking trite, hackneyed, cliched and unoriginal that, but for the sheer volume and sheer number of passers-by, drivers-by and occasional dedicated trolls posting it, it could have easily all come from the same fucking person.

And for those not in the know, Hurin was a “hero of Men” in Tolkien’s Silmarillion. Somebody please deliver over 9000 points to the Man-Hero!

By all means, let’s be accurate. In regards to his “reputation,” this entire thread is based upon HIS actions, namely the creation of the website in question. Any person who calls him a FUCKING TURD based on his creation/endorsement of said website is doing so without any regard to any statement or action on her part.

Likewise, anyone who called you a FUCKING ASSHOLE based upon what you wrote here tonight would be doing so without any regard to the fine work you do exposing cancer quacks.

It’s not hard to parse the statements; her lawyers and some judge and/or jury would be able to manage.

Whoa. Mercenary is a gross simplification. They(attorneys) are ethically bound to do the best for their clients within said ethics and the law. There’s a huge difference legally and in attorney (bar) ethics with just doing whatever it takes (which I have taken “mercenary” to mean).

You come in at #51 in defence of Radford and fifty-odd comments later you’re suddenly concerned for Stollznow’s welfare? Piss off you disingenuous douchebag. Your silencing tactic is as blatant as it is stupid.

By all means, let’s be accurate. In regards to his “reputation,” this entire thread is based upon HIS actions, namely the creation of the website in question. Any person who calls him a FUCKING TURD based on his creation/endorsement of said website is doing so without any regard to any statement or action on her part.

I am not sure how Robert does not get this. Radford is doing the damage to his reputation here. This whole post was about that. The comments are almost entirely about that. This is being accurate.

The reason I did not link to Radford’s site are rather obvious: he includes personal photos of the target of his lawsuit that I consider an example of further, continuing harassment. Much of his so-called ‘evidence’ is irrelevant to his case — he’s just trying to do scattershot blaming by throwing out accusations against Stollznow, and I object to Radford doing it, and I’m not going to promote it.

I haven’t seen the photo, but as a photographer, I sure hope Radford has a signed and dated model release or the photo was taken in a public location.

Paparazzi who publish unathorized photos without releases do so generally on the basis that the images were shot in public. Because, wow, oh, boy if it was a private photo that got published, the damages would be really, uh, damaging.

I’m sure Radford’s lawyers have given him advice in this matter, of course. Maybe starting with “change your name to ‘Fred’ and move to Belize”

Radford posted documentation of his claims which PZ won’t allow linking to. Interesting, that. I’m sure it has nothing at all to do with the fact that PZ picked a side before he had any awareness of what evidence might be out there

Curiously when he mentions Dr. Stollznow’s accusations that he sexually harassed/assaulted her, he doesn’t deny it.
And you pseudoskeptics have no room to accuse others of picking a side before the facts are in.

On an unrelated note, you are the most inane thing on the internet.

Nerd is a human being.
Not. A. Thing.

I can make every comment you’ve written in the last 2 years out of some combination the following:

Publishing a picture with sexual overtones* of someone without their permission = sexual harassment.

^^^^^^^^^^^
Hmm. Yes, I do believe that’s accurate.

*I haven’t violated the woman’s privacy** (whether she be Dr. Stollznow or anyone else), so I’m going by what others have described.
**As someone who has an enemy out there with pics of me in an extremely compromising position–pics that may be out there, up there on some porn site; or which might surface should I ever end up in the public eye for any reason–I can’t help but feel crushed by this in sympathy with whomever is in that picture, and that feeling is currently overriding any curiosity I might otherwise have felt. Crap. This is actually triggering me. I just started to cry. And it’s getting late so I have to go get some sleep.

Here’s some more accuracy for you, Robert: You, yes you, are a sadistic, immoral asshole to be defending this shitstain.

They(attorneys) are ethically bound to do the best for their clients within said ethics and the law. There’s a huge difference legally and in attorney (bar) ethics with just doing whatever it takes (which I have taken “mercenary” to mean).

I usually work with corporate litigators on cases that are worth more than CFI in toto. In those cases, if the lawyers find out that their clients have not been excruciatingly forthcoming with details, then there’s a meeting of epic face-palming, and a lot of Lexuses leave the parking-lot.

Ah, shitsnacks. My #130 is now kind of irrelevant. I should’ve known obvious troll would obviously be removed from proceedings.

Less narky but still obvious troll Robert B, however, is still in play.

You realise Radford’s his own worst enemy when it comes to his precious rep at the moment, right? His hubris and creepiness – all a matter of public record with no help from the likes of us – had already made him look like a major-league violator of personal boundaries and all-round narcissist before he inexplicably decided to dump his conspiracy-fantasy online and remove all doubt.

Anyway, haters: Stollznow’s raised over 50k. There will be more. Suck it.

I’ve never given money to a cause in my entire life. I’ve never believed strongly enough in anything to actually materially invest in it–or really trusted anyone else enough to. I’m not sure what sort of [ableist language goes here] came over me just now, but I just gave this lady my last two bucks on Earth. It’s… unsettling. I don’t even regret it like I regret every other act of sacrifice I’ve ever made–at least, not too much. I just feel weird!

I’m agitated for some reason–anxious, shaky. Like I’m actually on edge just because I don’t know what’ll happen to this person who isn’t me and will never do anything for me. And this Radford guy, I suddenly dislike him. Actively. As if he’d harmed me personally or got in the way of me getting what I want. I want him to feel… something bad. This drive is bizarre–I can’t remember ever feeling quite like this. This isn’t the usual wrathful wanting to take him apart with a reciprocating saw like I feel towards people who’ve hurt my statistically significant others. That’s just a territorial impulse, a patriarchal thing you’d probably disapprove of even without the violence, and as objectively sick and disturbing as that violent urge is, I don’t particularly care what guy X would feel like as I did horrible thing Y to him for harming sex partner Z–I just know I, personally, would feel immense emotional gratification in inflicting grievous bodily harm on that person because I’m horrible and have the ingrained gender biases of a god damn gorilla. PROTECT HAREM. DOMINATE INTERLOPER. EAT LEAVES. This is me trying to diffuse my inexplicable anxiety with humor, and it isn’t fucking working.

But it’s also not the detached, forced empathy I engage in to counteract my inner murder-ape, the one where I try to feel pity for the “bad guy” because he’s not really his fault he believes things that I think are warped and wrong and that what he needs is therapy, not Bronze-Age retributive justice. This is a whole different kind of horrible bloodymindedness, and it’s so undramatic it can’t be anything but one of my few genuine external presentations of emotion–I WANT Mr. Radford to experience completely mundane and nonlethal shame and loss and sorrow. No violence or gore, no sobbing in remorse, just petty… failure. I want him to fail. Not because it would remove him from my path, not because it would bring me any reward, but just because it’s wrong what he’s doing and he shouldn’t get to do it! This is terrifying and kind of cool–is this what it’s like not being just completely awful?

Robert Blah… Someone who has never seen QB VII ?!?! Really? This will hurt KS? This idiot blows up his own rep and we’re somehow bad to the other person for discussing it here? Did you receive your law degree from the University of Bizarro-World?

I usually work with corporate litigators on cases that are worth more than CFI in toto. In those cases, if the lawyers find out that their clients have not been excruciatingly forthcoming with details, then there’s a meeting of epic face-palming, and a lot of Lexuses leave the parking-lot.

Yes, my wife is a corporate litigator. And yes, if the clients try to hide something, they are generally screwed. The only way your attorney can get the best outcome for you is if you are totally forthcoming. My contention is the connotation of the word “mercenary” is all. It seems that way(mercenary) to people reading the newspapers (whoa, how old am I?), but that isn’t how it works in practice.

As a consultant, let me say that being a good mercenary is an honorable profession. In many of the mercenary wars of the renaissance, mercenaries saved damage and money because, as professional military experts, they often told their clients, “um, no. really.” Good attorneys do that, too, though often they are more subtle because legal disasters take a bit longer to play out than battlefield disasters.

I have no comment on the validity of the various emails and photos in the infodump, but I will say this about the quality of the forensic authentication of the emails: it’s crap. This is the claim of the forensic report:

The account examined shows the emails with the subject lines “just wondering” and “a shame” were sent in 2010 and nothing examined indicated otherwise. The timestamps stored by Google are not user‐editable. In more than six hundred forensic engagements, I have neither experienced – nor heard of –the successful modification of timestamps within Gmail to “backdate” emails. Additionally, Gmail stores timestamps not as a DAY‐MONTH‐YEAR string, but as a timestamp in a database. This database is
proprietary Google intellectual property and is not available for manipulation by the user.

If their forensics expert has never experienced or heard of the successful modification of timestamps within Gmail to backdate emails, they’re welcome to drop me a line. It just took me about 10 minutes to remember how to do it. I just now successfully inserted a message (a copy of my receipt from lunch today) backdated to 1997 into my Gmail inbox. It would be simple to prove the timestamps were forged, with access to Google’s mail logs, but that’s not the access the forensics lab had. They had regular user-level access to Radford’s accounts, and with that level of access it would be impossible (and irresponsible) for them to claim that they could say anything about the validity of the mail. The useful service they could provide is a third party declaration in court that the screenshots being submitted as evidence are true representations of what they saw in the email account as of the date they were retained, but they are flat out incorrect about their investigation establishing when those emails were sent, by whom, or what their original contents were. All those things can easily be faked, and only Google can provide evidence as to their validity or lack thereof.

The discussions about him on this and other forums are likely to influence the compensation he gets because the lawsuit is in large part about reputation. Discussions like this are, let’s face it, material evidence in his favor if he wins.

I’m not a lawyer, but I seriously doubt that’s true. Radford is claiming Stollznow’s post hurt his reputation, but we’re angry at Radford over one of his own actions. The biggest harm to Radford’s reputation is Radford himself, at this point.

Courts have recognized that certain intimate details about people, even though true, may be “off limits” to the press and public. For example, publishing detailed information about a private person’s sexual conduct, medical condition or educational records might result in legal trouble. In order to succeed in this kind of lawsuit, the person suing must show that the information was: (1) sufficiently private or not already in the public domain, (2) sufficiently intimate, and (3) highly offensive to a reasonable person.

Emphasis mine. Radford may have set himself up for a slam-dunk defamation counter-suit, so long as Stollznow is able to afford it.

chigau: My point is that the forensics report says “these mails were sent in 2010″. This may or may not be true, but the forensics investigation has no basis for making the claim that they were. The best they can do is say that on February 11, 2014, those messages were in Ben Radford’s Gmail inbox with a date stamp of 2010. They emphatically cannot claim that this means the messages were sent in 2010, or that it is impossible to fake a timestamp on a message in Gmail. It’s not just possible; it’s easy.

I’m not saying anything about whether the mail in Radford’s account has been altered or not. I’m saying that the forensics company that “validated” it is incompetent to do that kind of investigation.

t I will say this about the quality of the forensic authentication of the emails: it’s crap

You’d certainly want to correlate sender system logs against recipient system logs and inbox message times. Indeed, it would be exceedingly interesting if there were substantial differences, since generally sending system messages match recipient messages match inboxes, etc. If you’re just changing one of those by adjusting mesage values or sending a fake message by talking directly to an SMTP server, you may as well be hoisting a flag, setting off fireworks, and hiring a mariachi band to call attention to yourself. The really fun ones are the ones there it’s 11/05/2013 and you suddenly get a message coming in the logs between two messages time-stamped 11/05/2013/11:55.02 and 11.55.05 that is dated 10/1/2014.. Not only does that fail to stand up to examination it’s a dead giveaway that someone tried (incompetently) to forge a message.

Forging messages is hard because you need to insert a fake log message into the correct time-sequence of two different administrative domains’ system logs, with the same size and message-id, and then not alter the reciept order of any other messages.

The forensics team claims GMail email headers are not user-editable. Josh L. claims they are, and that they just did so on a lark. Josh L. also points out that this forensics team only had the same access as a user, when you need to check administrative access to confidently state what they claim.

The best they can do is say that on February 11, 2014, those messages were in Ben Radford’s Gmail inbox with a date stamp of 2010.

Unless they are complete fools, then it probably is true, since it’d be a matter of discovery to determine if the messages were or were not collected at that time. Someone would have to be very confident indeed to claim that the messages were fake; they would have to know that google’s logs would NOT show reciept and under discovery the sending logs wouldn’t show transmission.

Basically, it’s something anyone would only lie about if they were very desperate because they’d be obviously shown to be a liar about crucial evidence if the actual logs were examined.

GMail email headers are not user-editable. Josh L. claims they are, and that they just did so on a lark

There are headers in the messages, and there are log records in google’s server and the sender’s server and the sender’s email system. With an unaltered message, all of those will be unaltered and in sequence. If you edit the message, the server’s records and the message’s headers will be different – we call that “a smoking gun”

Josh’ demonstrations of editing message headers would simply be used to demonstrate that he’s attempting to alter records; any attorney that would let someone like him near a jury is a rank amateur who’d not even belong on the OJ Simpson circus let alone a computer forensics case.

The timestamps stored by Google are not user‐editable. In more than six hundred forensic engagements, I have neither experienced – nor heard of – the successful modification of timestamps within Gmail to “backdate” emails. Additionally, Gmail stores timestamps not as a DAY‐MONTH‐YEAR string, but as a timestamp in a database. This database is proprietary Google intellectual property and is not available for manipulation by the user.

That’s what the official conclusion of the forensic investigation, which did not have access to system logs, says. This is not a responsible conclusion, and the investigator should be ashamed of him- or herself. As Marcus Ranum says, it’d be a matter of discovery to determine the truth. And yet, the forensics investigator is making a truth claim. At best, this is irresponsible.

Again, this isn’t saying anything about which of Radford or Stollznow is telling the truth about when particular messages were sent. It’s just saying that the forensic report is worthless in determining the truth. The timestamps stored by Google are user-editable, because the contents of the mailbox are user-editable. The system logs are not user-editable, but only Google has access to those. (Or did — I have no idea what their retention policy is.)

Now, someone in 2014 wants to argue the message was size 379? Uh, no. Because there is 5 moths worth of correctly sequenced unalterered logs on top of the reciept log and the original retrieval of the message. Indeed, it would be insanely hard to argue the message had ever been anything but size 372 because to backdate the size you’d have to rewrite system logs back months. I would say even google’d have trouble doing that (the original message would show with the correct size in postini logs, too!)

Someone claiming message headers have been edited is very very very far out on a limb or extremely rarely telling the truth. Most likely, they are very very very far out on a limb. Lying about message headers isn’t as simple a matter as editing a date field in an inbox. Unless it were true (and if it were true, that’s the date google would display) Gmail gets a squajillion messages right every day.

@ 171: even with a couple of trolls in here, (and good ol’ dependably prickly Chas), that comment is the least relevant thing that’s been posted in this thread. The Thunderdome’s probably the place for it.

Can you do a little Explain-it-to-me-like-I’m 5-years-old summary (granting the caveat that it isn’t technically or pedantically perfect)?

My interpretation of everything that’s been said so far goes something like this:
Even if a person tried to alter the emails within their inbox to make them appear older, which *could* be done, that appearance of age would not match with some logs on the email servers to which users typically, or essentially universally, lack access. And an analysis which concluded emails were altered, but which hadn’t checked this data (which is likely not shared w/investigator by Google/whomever), is questionable b/c of that ignorance?

This is not a responsible conclusion, and the investigator should be ashamed of him- or herself.

Actually, a responsible conclusion is that gmail probably is presenting the correct date unless someone edited the mailbox, in which case the server logs would conclusively show there was an attempt to tamper. The conclusion that the date is correct barring reasons to believe otherwise is responsible because google correctly handles a bazillion messages a day without screwing up their dates (*) If someone believes a message was edited it would need more investigation but I’d say the only way someone could fool an experienced investigator would be to tamper with google’s MTA logs, postini’s spam filter logs, and the senders’ own MTA logs.

it’d be a matter of discovery to determine the truth. And yet, the forensics investigator is making a truth claim. At best, this is irresponsible.

Not at all. Since google handles assloads of messages every day without screwing up their dates, it becomes an interesting problem to argue that a particular date on a particular message was somehow magically altered when the system was apparently working correctly for millions of other people at the same time. Asking for a detailed investigation would only serve to make someone look like they were wasting the court and expert’s time, or trying to tamper with the timestamp.

It’s just saying that the forensic report is worthless in determining the truth.

That’s absurd.

It could be extremely valuable. I’d need to know more about what they looked at, but dismissing it as “worthless” when you obviously know nothing about the topic smacks of dishonesty on your part.

The timestamps stored by Google are user-editable, because the contents of the mailbox are user-editable.

I have mentioned repeatedly that there are multiple timestamps, under a variety of custodians, kept in time-synchronous order, all of which would have to be altered in order to fool a detailed investigation. Google probably is literally incapable of doing that since it would entail altering data that was part way into a gigantic log file and all the backups of that log file.

I have no idea what their retention policy is

Years, when you take into account backups. And that’s not counting the NSA’s copies in Utah. :)

Again, I do not know what “forensic examination” was performed but tampering could be very simple to discover. For example a bonehead might edit the date/timestamp in their mailbox and not realize that every message includes headers that don’t get displayed by the mail client but which are still part of the message. If those dates were off in the mailbox that would be immediately obvious sign of tampering. It would take me under 5 minutes to catch that, given the original message.

Tell ya what, if you have a mail client that has an option to display message headers, go turn that on for some selected message. Read ’em and weep. Each of those received-by: lines is a log message from a different server. Now, go back and alter them all so that nobody notices. LOL.

Marcus, I get the difference between message headers and syslog entries. I’m not saying anything at all about syslog entries, and I’m not saying anything about whether the message headers in the messages “authenticated” by Flashback Data LLC for Radford’s lawyer have or have not been altered. I’m saying that Flashback’s claim that the date Gmail displays for a message isn’t user-editable is not accurate. Gmail will definitely display a faked date the same as it displays a valid one.

I am at this very moment looking at a message that Gmail says was sent in 1997. It looks like this: png

I know that there exist logs at Google which would trivially expose the deception, and that it would be stupid for someone to try to get away with that kind of simple header modification. What I’m pointing out is that Flashback is saying that, based on their looking at a screenshot very like the one I just linked to, the messages they were hired to investigate were sent when Gmail says they were. That’s not a claim they can, or should, make. Of course, by the time it got to a jury, any tampering of the kind I just did would (or should, anyway) not stand up to scrutiny. But Radford has posted these forensics reports for the public to read and come to conclusions from, and the public doesn’t get to subpoena log records from Google.

I’d need to know more about what they looked at, but dismissing it as “worthless” when you obviously know nothing about the topic smacks of dishonesty on your part.

I’ve sent you email containing a link to the report, which says what they looked at and how.

I have mentioned repeatedly that there are multiple timestamps, under a variety of custodians, kept in time-synchronous order, all of which would have to be altered in order to fool a detailed investigation.

Yes, and I agree with you. What I’m saying is that the investigator did not perform a detailed investigation.

Even if a person tried to alter the emails within their inbox to make them appear older, which *could* be done, that appearance of age would not match with some logs on the email servers to which users typically, or essentially universally, lack access

Yep. MTAs (mail transfer agents) log each message in and out. So you have the sender, who gives the message to their MTA, which logs it and forwards it to google’s MTA which logs it and passes it to their postini engine which scans it for spam and progably logs it and then hands it to the user’s mail database with a constructed date based on the send time that’s in the original message header from the sender’s MUA (mail user agent) via their MTA. The sender’s MTA would have the date-stamp the MUA put in there, as would google, etc. *and* the date stamp when it was received and forwarded. To alter the message date one would have to alter the message, it’s headers (that’s easy) and then google’s postini logs, and google’s mail server logs, and the senders’ MTA logs. Or it would be obvious as a mariachi band riding an elephant on a quiet suburban sidewalk.

Here’s an example of the headers you usually don’t see in a message. Now, in thunderbird (my mail user agent) it shows this message as having arrived: 2:49 AM
inside the headers it shows:from [68.168.97.189] (port=56316 helo=dev.freethoughtblogs.com) by naos.lunarpages.com with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.77) (envelope-from ) id 1WVbSz-0003IZ-KP for mjr@ranum.com; Wed, 02 Apr 2014 23:49:38 -070

So, Naos is the “ranum.com” MTA, logging the message coming in, before thunderbird pulled it down and made it visible to me. There’s a server log on Naos that I suppose I could log into and edit if I was administrator. But if I just edit the message to say a different date, Naos’ logs would be trivial to search for id 1WVbSz-0003IZ-KP

Naos got it from freethought blogs’ server with the same ID. So you could go to their logs and look for that message id 1WVbSz-0003IZ-KP and the time would be something before when Naos got it, or we have a time-loop anomaly.

Now, if I wanted to edit the date on the message, I need to edit my inbox, Naos’ logs, and freethought blogs’ logs.

I have spamassassin on Naos (part of the setup at my hosting service) so spamassassin’s logs will also have id 1WVbSz-0003IZ-KP in them, probably a fraction of a second after the MTA collected the message. I’d have to edit those too. And fix up the file creation date in the pop server on Naos. Aaaand, I pull my mail down with POP so the pop server’s logs will have a record of when I pulled dwon id 1WVbSz-0003IZ-KP And. And. And.

It’s irresponsible to hypothesize tampering with the mail date unless someone can demonstrate (for starters) that something weird happened like a message arrived before it left (by more than can be explained by clock skew between servers, or time zones)

I don’t know enough about what Flashback looked at, and neither (apparently) do you. I wouldn’t say they’re irresponsible to comment (if they’re the experts on the ground doing the investigation) or not, since I don’t know what information they had available. Since this is a trivial matter and you’re veering off into conspiracy theory-land, I’m more suspicious of your argument than whatever Flashback had to say, for sure.

If you want to hire me and give me access to the data, I’ll be happy to sign a letter of retention and an NDA and then I’ll tell you. But before you do that, since I’d need MTA logs, you’ll need an FBI laison to get a warrant, since NSA doesn’t like me as much as they used to, for various reasons. Square that away and we can talk about my rates and some timeframes for a report. ;)

Flashback would potentially be able to dismiss editing of the message’s date simply by examining headers.

Here’s another hint: all the other messages in the inbox have to have sequential dates that match as well, you probably wouldn’t need to get to Google’s logs. But if I were investigating it on your nickle, I’d want Google’s logs because it’d buy me a new pickup truck by the time I sent you my bill.

The email date thing is a stupid red herring. The date-stamps for the message-ids in question should match in what both parties have. If they don’t then either party’s server logs ought to be on backup tape someplace and a single pass scan through the server logs for the message-ids will resolve the question without further effort. You don’t need a forensic expert, just a junior system administrator.

Because they are making a claim about when the messages were sent. Are you saying that it’s ok for a forensic investigator to conclude that the thing they’re investigating is true because that sort of thing usually is true?

I don’t know enough about what Flashback looked at, and neither (apparently) do you.

I mailed you a link to the report from Flashback. You’re welcome to read it or not, obviously, but if you do read it you’ll see what they claim to have looked at.

you’re veering off into conspiracy theory-land

Once again, I’m not saying that I think messages were altered. I have no theory, conspiracy or otherwise. The only “argument” I have is that Flashback’s report is based on insufficient evidence, and I make this claim based on Flashback’s own report of their process. They don’t even say they looked at the full message headers, let alone server logs.

You want me to investigate it for you?

No. I just want you to know that while you’re saying that neither of us has enough information about what Flashback did to comment on their report, I’ve sent you the same information I have, which I believe is enough information to inform a comment. If you don’t care to read it, that’s fine, but please don’t keep telling me that I don’t have enough information when you can’t be bothered to find out what information I have.

The account examined shows the emails with the subject lines “just wondering” and “a shame” were sent in 2010 and nothing examined indicated otherwise.

There are two ways for this statement to be true. The first is that a detailed investigation was done, examining server logs, and the logs agree with the message headers. The second is that the only things they looked at all said 2010, and they didn’t look at anything which might have said otherwise.

One more time, just to be super clear: I’m not saying that Radford altered the messages. I’m not saying I think Radford altered the messages. I’m saying that I’ve read the forensic report he’s pointing at to prove that his timeline is the correct one, and I’m finding the report wanting.

Marcus, Josh’s point is that any text that is displayed in a web browser is capable of being modified; any investigation that only went as far as reviewing screenshots, PDFs, or printed copies of messages from a mail client that were displayed in a web browser is thus inherently open to the dates and times having been tampered. It is trivially easy to do this. Thus if there is a dispute over the claimed date and time of messages, this evidence is worthless in establishing the truth of the claim – and the services of a forensic expert like yourself would be wanted in investigating message-IDs and examining the relevant server logs.

For fun: it’s not as easy to do in some of the newer browsers since they try to prevent users being able to run JavaScript commands from the URL field, but you can easily tell your web browser to make the contents of the window editable:javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true';%20document.designMode='on';%20void%200
You may then freely edit any text within the window and make pretty screen-shots or printouts bearing falsified dates, times, or any other false information that would constitute fraud.

While that is true, presumably the investigators weren’t leaving the room between page loads to give Radford the chance to alter things. And when the pages are served up from Google, any changes you may have made in the past are lost, so you can alter the timestamp all you like in the window and it won’t help you one bit if someone else makes you reload the page.

That’s the “show original” view of the headers from gmail. It’s entirely possible I missed a header line in there — literally all I did was download the message, do a search and replace to turn 2014 into 1997, and upload the message. Probably something in the Message-ID would give away when the message was actually created. But the point is, Gmail is showing me only what I put there. It’s not showing me any of its internal metadata. I assume Google knows when its imap server received that message. But as far as I can tell, only Google knows that. Sure, a junior sysadmin at Google (or Square, which sent the original message I altered) could find out that the timestamps in the message headers don’t match the timestamps in the mail server logs. But Flashback isn’t claiming to have asked any junior sysadmins to do that for them. They’re saying that Radford gave them his gmail credentials, they logged in as him and took a look around, and everything seemed legit to them. That’s… interesting, I guess. But “seems legit to me, and I do this a lot” isn’t a standard of evidence I personally like.

I understand that there are a lot more ways then I am aware of for, say, detecting tampering with actual photos, but something like a screenshot of an inbox/text message? I would imagine that if nothing else, a straight up pixel by pixel altering could be done. And even if there are traces of that left on the original image file, if someone blows that up to full-screen size, and takes a screen capture of it, would anything show?

Regardless, I find Radford’s responses increasingly more and more despicable. So far I don’t think his arguments have really developed any more sophistication then what I used to encounter on the grade school playground…

The Vicar (#206), I’m well aware the fraud would be obvious if the investigator had full access to the actual mail account in a browser; I was just giving a quick and easy demonstration of how easy it would be to create fraudulent ‘evidence’ similar to what is being offered in the report. Josh in #207 demonstrates a rather more complicated method of achieving a similar result, however I suspect his method would require access to the server logs to prove fraud.

I’m not the one claiming I don’t pay attention to someone I clearly pay attention to, fuckwit.

Do you feel ok to tell me why you left the atheism plus forum? You’re still listed as a global moderator there. Was it that crazy bîtch ceepolk?

You want very much to believe there’s some scandal to it don’t you? I burned myself out on it and just stopped checking the forums. The more time that passed without my checking, the more daunting the prospect of catching up became and the more I stayed away and the bigger the task of catching back up became. Feedback loop of sorts. That’s really all there was to it. At this point, I really have no shits to give that I’m still listed as a mod. If I did go back to posting there, I’d step down because too much time has passed since I last participated.

With regard to ceepolk, she was my top recommendation at the time she was offered modship and she never did anything to make me regret that while I was there. I couldn’t tell you how long it’s been since I last even looked at the site. Based on my personal experience with you and with her and lacking any info on what’s gone on at A+ since I stopped participating, you’ll have to forgive me if ceepolk is the one to whom I give the benefit of the doubt.

The forensics firm was given Radford’s gmail account credentials and a list of email messages to look for and “authenticate”. They provided screenshots of those messages along with cryptographic hashes of the screenshots so that they could look at the screenshots later and say for sure whether they had been altered between the time the screenshots were made and when they were asked again to authenticate the screenshots as real. So far, so good. You can think of it like the service a notary public provides — you have them witness you signing something, and later they can say that yes, you signed that document on such and such a date, and this is a true copy of that document. They don’t have anything to do with what the document says; they just assert that you signed it in their presence.

Where they go wrong, in my opinion, is in saying that the messages in question were sent in 2010 and that “nothing examined indicated otherwise”. Radford is pointing to this as proof that his timeline is the true one, not Stollznow’s. Maybe he’s right. I don’t know, and neither does the forensic investigator, because unless he did significantly more work than he says he did, he didn’t investigate anything which could have indicated otherwise.

Jason mentioned that CFI moved from another server to Gmail in 2012 and noted that that could have an impact on timestamps and suchlike. Just saying, since I’ve not seen it mentioned here yet.

Publishing that photograph that the woman in the photograph clearly didn’t consent to is, to me, a clear case of sexual harassment. Unfortunately, I’m sure most judges won’t agree.

Above and beyond the sleeze and creepypasta that’s BR, it bothers me to high hell that
a.) Karen has had trouble finding representation due to BR’s lawyers reputation
b.) It’s possible, according to said reputation, that BR’s lawyer is supportive of these tactics
c.) Showing the slightest bit of “Karen is not a saint” seems to be enough to skew the case in BR’s favour, despite all the “not a saint” shit that BR has done, because the man is automatically more believable and reliable and trustworthy than the woman in these cases
d.) Using c.), they are going for the tried and true nut and slut strategy and it’ll likely work because bitches be crazy, yo is such an embedded cultural narrative.

Jason mentioned that CFI moved from another server to Gmail in 2012 and noted that that could have an impact on timestamps and suchlike. Just saying, since I’ve not seen it mentioned here yet.

Publishing that photograph that the woman in the photograph clearly didn’t consent to is, to me, a clear case of sexual harassment. Unfortunately, I’m sure most judges won’t agree.

Above and beyond the sleeze and creepypasta that’s BR, it bothers me to high hell that
a.) Karen has had trouble finding representation due to BR’s lawyers reputation
b.) It’s possible, according to said reputation, that BR’s lawyer is supportive of these tactics
c.) Showing the slightest bit of “Karen is not a saint” seems to be enough to skew the case in BR’s favour, despite all the “not a saint” shit that BR has done, because the man is automatically more believable and reliable and trustworthy than the woman in these cases
d.) Using c.), they are going for the tried and true nut-and-sl*ut strategy and it’ll likely work because bi*tches be crazy, yo is such an embedded cultural narrative.

So yeah, I’m depressed now because the world sucks. Also, the filter doesn’t like the words I use :(

…Is this supposed to offend people? Or is it your idea of a logical ‘gotcha’ a la “If we came from chimps, why are there still chimps?” That’s the level of your discourse so far.

It is amazing how many of these “sceptic” types come in here and proceed to make the same kind of arguments as the creobots. If you change the topics they are interested in they are fairly indistinguishable.

I also love it when they pull the whole “I used to be a fan” shtick. I cannot see how anyone would want thetugboat on their side.

34 active threads in the last 7 days, many with hundreds of replies and thousands of views would indicate otherwise.

Which is a perfect illustration of why “fuckwit” is a term that springs so quickly to mind when you’re around. It’s like you actually think that, if you claim a thing, it’s true and that nobody can just go look for themself.

Thanks, I’m not seeing any problems now, but when I posted that comment, that was the first time I was able to access this comment thread since I posted my last comment (close to 1/2 hour, reloading/refreshing fairly frequently…).

And, back to the point, even if the emails are on the wrong dates, that doesn’t mean he didn’t harass her.

(and what’s up with the “I sent her birthday gifts/cards, and she thanked me” bit? srsly, does this guy think anything but unrestrained murder attempts are actually evidence that she really wants to bang him?)

It’s interesting how a woman’s testimony that she was sexually harassed is dismissed as mere hearsay but “Ben says that Baxter said that Karen said something that might not be altogether true” is apparently evidence of…something?

I don’t get it, how is this supposed to be good for him?
On the face of it, it’s a pretty clear fallacy to think that having been in a relationship means that you can never harass your ex (I’m just guessing here, but I strongly suspect that attempting any form of sexual interaction with any of my exes would be counted as harassment, and most of them are still good friends!) and I can’t imagine any court falling for that who doesn’t also fall for the likes of, “she’s my wife! How could it be rape?!” But there’s also the whole “I am demonstrating to the world that I believe that having ever had a relationship with a person allows me to do what I like regarding them” thing, which surely only counts as evidence that he would feel entitled to continue pushing sexual advances when they had been expressly rejected? Even if it’s not evidence that he did, it doesn’t seem like much of a defence against the accusation.

My understanding that photos of her enthusiastically consenting at a time she says they were not involved are not included on the website. I suspect they will be seen in court, however.

I’ve read the whole thread, I’m still not sure if this has been explicitly corrected: the photos *are* up on the website – it’s at the bottom of the “relationship” page.

Having read part of Ben’s “defence” website – his main claims seem to be:

• Karen behaved familiarly towards him (e-mails, birthday cards, etc.) even after the alleged sexual assaults/harassment.
• Karen herself initiated contact at times when she claims she asked him to stop contacting.
• Karen is a nasty person.

Even taking this at face value (and therefore explicitly trusting everything Ben says), it doesn’t really follow that she was falsely defaming his name in her blogpost. Karen’s claim “Ben did X” is only defamation if Ben shows “I didn’t do X”. How Karen behaved herself in the time surrounding this does not change this fact. And looking at Radford’s behaviour during this whole thing – his actions belie his words. Filing a lawsuit, essentially creating his own personal harassment&hate-group, starting an online hate campaign through a webite, trying to prove his point in the court of public opinion by publishing compromising naked pictures and personal information…

Ben Radford is a horrible person and should be ashamed of himself.

@thetugboat

[random adolescent rambling from the ‘pit]

Don’t let the banhammer hit you on the ass on the way out.. Oh wait that’s what it does.

1) Dr Stollznow and Radford once had a relationship. (Not denied by Dr Stollznow AFAIK, I could be wrong, not seen a denial though.)

2) Dr Stollzonow’s path through life and love has not been deemed Appropriately Smooth™ . (By whom? Since when is this even relevant?)

3) Dr Stollznow has attempted to raise money publicly to fight a lawsuit from Radford, i.e. to defend herself. (Similar to Radford trying to get money via similar means to defend himself, or, to take another example, for Shermer to sue PZ to defend himself. Yet these last two are not deemed “frauds” by our less than fulsomely woman friendly chums. Curiouser and curiouser.)

4) Derived from 1) and 2) Radford’s harassing acts, acts subject to censure by his employer (size/appropriateness of censure in debate, but censure demonstrably occurred) under relevant sexual harassment law, therefore somehow Permissible and Right™ . (I can’t even see how one gets from the first things to here. Well, I can see how people claim it is logical, I just seriously disagree that it is.)

…a selfie he took of himself, shirtless, in bed with a woman. Radford has a smug smirk on his face; the woman is covering her face with her hand, clearly not wanting any part of this exhibition.

If he’s capable of disregarding a woman’s wishes like that, he’s capable of disregarding them in other ways. This merely confirms that he is capable of harrassment. Why on Earth would he think it vindicates him?

…does he think that somehow having once had a relationship, it means he can never ever be guilty of harassment ever again?

Oh, right, yeah… that’s why. And I bet there’s a bunch of people out there who think the same thing. In fact, judging from the length of this thread (I haven’t read it yet) I bet there’s a couple on here. Suppose I’d better read it *sigh*.

I have been following this from afar due to lack of time, but this latest antic burned me enough that I got off my lazy ass and donated what little I could to the campaign. I can’t even begin to imagine how stressed out she is right now. I’ve also taken the time to email Popehat – although I’m sure someone would have already – since they are fond of requesting pro bono legal services for those facing harassment via defamation suits. Part of what I emailed included the following, which I think is worth mentioning here:

Even if Karen was utterly lying up until this point about her harassment, it seems clear to me that this latest information-sharing feat is harassment in itself and designed to chill her (and others) speech. If the case was that strong, one should not need to try her in the court of public opinion by posting private emails and personal photos.

There is the fact that the documents that he was disciplined for (the emails) at CFI, and which have been the basis for endless numbers of attacks on him seem to be forged.

Clearly the idiot who posted this originally has since been banned, but how on earth does one go about forging an email? I mean, you can set up an email account in the framee’s name, but you can’t set one up at the same provider with the same name. You’d have to have the same address at a different provider, or a different address at the same provider; so it would be trivially easy to prove that the framee didn’t send them.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt that he’d maybe fat-fingered that one. He spelled Stephanie Svan’s name as “Stefunny,” the other day, though.

Bear in mind that these are the ‘non-bratty non-teenage’ luminaries that came up with – and continue to use – Herr Myers / Peezus, Stealzdough and all the rest of the drivel. Also, the current narrative being bandied about over at the pit is that Karen is emotionally unstable and that she should stop this legal madness. Not because they’re sceptical of her, oh gosh noes! It’s because in her emotionally unstable state, the added stress of litigation might cause harmful behaviour, and they’re just suggesting that she stop the proceedings because they care! Oh, and she’s a crazy etc. who might flip out and kill her husband, and also that this was her plan all along: Making calculated accusations against Radford to provoke him into suing her, allowing her to play the sympathy card here and on other sites, to get the dollars rolling into her defense fund.

If he’s in the right, he should be just sitting smug and quiet, ready to unload in court…and here he is, dropping all this stuff on us and everyone else.

There are a huge number of things I don’t understand. For example, I’m not a lawyer, I also don’t pretend to the IT expertise necessary to determine whether emails are fraudulent or not, and so on. I’ve also not been in the position that Radford is in. My feeling (Not Science!) is that were I in that position, if I were going to court at all and were I innocent, I’d opt for shutting the fuck up. I think I’d be advised on legal grounds to shut the fuck up. Despite what I might wish.

Even giving Radford the extreme benefit of the doubt (and from the little I know he really does not deserve it), he was censured by his employer for (sexual) harassment. Again, I’m no lawyer, but isn’t that rather a significant point of evidence in favour of Dr Stollznow’s claim? Isn’t the presence of witnesses to harassment also rather a significant thing? Does all this somehow not count in court?

As noted by many, isn’t Radford’s material dump on the internet also a rather spectacular own goal? It poisons the well, at least potentially (again, giving him undue benefit of the doubt and assuming his innocence, not something I am convinced of at all! Quite the reverse.), not least by poisoning the well against himself! Adding another piece of evidence (the photo) that he’s guilty of harassment. Thinking about how this muddies the waters I’m not seeing many (any?)advantages for him (possibly my Non-Lawyer limitations of tactical legal manoeuvres). It seems like an act done in a fit of pique (well, all of this does). Doesn’t this prejudice any trial? Unlike comments by unrelated people on events, this is a direct “comment” by the person bringing the suit in public. It reveals his counsel’s hand to some extent and possibly could be said to influence any jury (there are juries in these cases, right?). Again, I might be missing something but this seems like he aimed a shotgun at his foot and went double barrelled on his toes.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt that he’d maybe fat-fingered that one. He spelled Stephanie Svan’s name as “Stefunny,” the other day, though.

Bear in mind that these are the ‘non-bratty non-teenage’ luminaries that came up with – and continue to use – a wide variety of childish name substitutions. Also, the current narrative being bandied about over at the pit is that Karen is emotionally unstable and that she should stop this legal madness. Not because they’re sceptical of her, oh gosh noes! It’s because in her emotionally unstable state, the added stress of litigation might cause harmful behaviour, and they’re just suggesting that she stop the proceedings because they care! Oh, and she’s a crazy etc. who might flip out and kill her husband, and also that this was her plan all along: Making calculated accusations against Radford to provoke him into suing her, allowing her to play the sympathy card here and on other sites, to get the dollars rolling into her defense fund.

As for hits to his reputation, it’s his actions now that are being criticized. It doesn’t matter what happened before – wipe everything clean, pretend that the two of them were best buddies and supersecret lovers the entire time up until today if you want, it’s STILL harassment and gross and sleazy to post a picture of someone in bed without their permission. It is doubly gross to post a picture of that sort that seems from that person’s pose to have been taken at all when the person in the picture didn’t even want it to be taken in the first place. THAT is harassment, right there. As to whether it helps or hurts his case, it seems to me to be like walking drunk into court to protest your DUI. “No, yourjudgesir, I never drink in inappropriate shischuashons.” Harassing someone to prove that you didn’t harass them is a dumbass thing to do, and that’s what he’s being criticized for here.

Thumper @ #240 (or at #227, as will be the case when the data point for correlating internet trolling with sadism has their posts removed),

Bob Blaskiewicz is not an idiot. Look him up; he has done good things in the skeptical movement. In this current case, he has offered a claim at post #51, which is that “There is the fact that the documents that he was disciplined for (the emails) at CFI, and which have been the basis for endless numbers of attacks on him seem to be forged. Badly. That’s why the lawsuit is not just for defamation but for fraud.”

It isn’t hard to forge e-mail, especially if you already have a legitimate e-mail from the person whose name you wish to create a forgery under. See Josh L’s post at #207 (which will become #200) where he explains how he altered an e-mail from 2014; he used IMAP to pull a message from his Gmail account, used a text editor to change all instances of the year to 1997 in the downloaded copy, and then pushed the altered message – effectively a new message – back onto the server. At a glance, the copy on the sender’s e-mail system no longer matches the altered copy on the recipient’s account – but you need access to both copies to establish there isa discrepancy, and then someone like Marcus would be called in to analyse server logs to determine how the forgery was done. As his commentary earlier in the thread states (#127), usually this will cause one side of the case to fold under evidence of wrongdoing provided by expert testimony.

Say, I wonder if this guy is the same as that midnightmarauder that was failing to make a point here a few days ago?

He is. He’s been here most days for the last 3-ish weeks under a different nym each time. Usually keeps to the thunderdome but he’s been branching out a bit since the whole Stollznow/Radford situation flared back up.

Re: giving him the benefit of the doubt, I figured there was enough to criticize without resort to citing something that could have been a typo.

Thanks, I wasn’t aware of his history, and I should have read the whole thread (I have now, and have seen Marcus Ranum and Josh L’s exchange). I posted in haste without the full facts and done screwed up. I even managed to miss the fact he hasn’t been banned at all; I just missed his posts somehow. Sorry all, but particularly Robert Blaskiewicz.

Bob Blaskiewicz is not an idiot. Look him up; he has done good things in the skeptical movement.

Whatever his prior track record within the skeptical community may or may not be, he also posted this @ 110;

Let’s say that Radford wins, no matter how. The discussions about him on this and other forums are likely to influence the compensation he gets because the lawsuit is in large part about reputation. Discussions like this are, let’s face it, material evidence in his favor if he wins. So you better be damned sure about what you say, because it’s not your ass on the line; it’s Karen’s.

Even if it is meant to be well intentioned, this is still a silencing tactic that operates by effectively saying ‘stop talking about Radford’s creepy behaviour or Karen Stollznow will suffer’. Given his earlier comments on the thread, I have a hard time believing that it is actually his intent to protect Karen from legal sanction (and even that would be extremely patronising). This seems to be a case of Blaskiewicz tying to shut down criticism of Radford by using legal threats by proxy against a harrassment victim, which is sleazy, to say the least.

Blaskiewicz may indeed do all kinds of good when it comes to other issues, but when the topic under discussion is the harrassment of women, especially within the atheist/skeptiocal community, then he seems to promptly morph into an arsehat. It is, sadly, an all too common affliction.

Really, I guarantee you, the guy’s lawyers are at least mostly on board with this tactic. I’ve got a document from the lawyers, letterhead and all, that includes almost all the information that Radford has posted (it does not include the photos, however), that was sent as a cease&desist to force me to take down posts that mentioned Radford’s harassment history.

Also, our nightly troll has exceeded the number of pseudonyms used by Reap Paden. He holds the record now. Golf clap, everyone! Golf clap!

Regardless of whether or not Radford wins his legal case, he’s managed to discredit himself in the atheist/skeptic world. The parallel with Bora Zivkovic is apparent. Also if CFI retains Radford as an employee they will never see a cent or kind word from me again.

And this is why women just can’t win. I did not read all of the revolting correspondence, but I did read a few of the emails. And I see Radford repeatedly attempting to escalate and/or provoke a response from Stollznow, and Stollsnow repeatedly offering exactly the sort of politely discouraging response one does when attempting not to offend someone who can influence the success of one’s career. The fact that he offers any of this material as proof of her “encouragement” or evidence of his professional conduct is a blatant reminder of how deeply ingrained this sense of entitlement can be in some men.

Holy fucking shit you people are despicable. You all gleefully toss about assucsations of sexual harassment all over this blog, twitter, etc. and then when the target of this public smear campaign responds in kind with actual evidence, suddenly you all care about privacy.

Karen airs her accusations in public, and you all gleefully repeat and share and retweet these accusations (never once bothering to add the word “alleged”) for weeks on end. That’s all fine a good, apparently. But posting actual evidence in response – total violation of privacy and should have saved it for a court of law.

LOL this kind of stuff seems more like deliberate parody than genuine commentary. The hypocrisy and the lack of self-awareness on display here is epic in both quality and quantity.

Right, because you can’t glean “alleged” from “this person I know told me this happened.” And, of course, saying “this person I know told me this happened” is 100% exactly like posting without consent, a picture of someone which was, itself, taken without their consent as evidence that you’ve never violated their boundaries.

LOL this kind of stuff seems more like deliberate parody than genuine commentary. The hypocrisy and the lack of self-awareness on display here is epic in both quality and quantity.

Where are the inaccuracies? People here, like me, are rightfully appalled at what Radford has just dumped on the web. It’s a blatant attempt to skew public opinion before his case goes to trial, and further, it backfires on him — it makes him look like a real skeevy creep. If he’s in the right, he should be just sitting smug and quiet, ready to unload in court…and here he is, dropping all this stuff on us and everyone else.

I, too, am appalled. Although I let loose on Radford a month or two ago on false rape accusations for that execrable article he wrote without disclosing his conflicts of interest, I tried to remain assiduously agnostic regarding who was in the right in this case, simply because I didn’t have enough data to make a judgment. (I still don’t, this “data dump”—if you can call it that—notwithstanding.) As has been pointed out, however, even if Radford is 100% the wronged party in this case, his posting all this stuff to the web, particularly those pictures, is still the biggest dick move I’ve seen in a very, very long time.

The hypocrisy and the lack of self-awareness on display here is epic in both quality and quantity.

My irony meter just asploded.

Also, please explain how posting a picture of you in bed with someone who is supposedly the person you are accused of harassing, and who from their body language does not want you taking that picture, is somehow evidence that you did not harass them? I am interested as to what logic, if logic it can be called, was used to arrive at that conclusion.

Two questions and a thought about the pictures (yeah, I looked… and I’m honestly sorry that I did)…

1. That picture of Stollznow and Radford at a cafe or something… Radford is implying that this is photographic evidence that they were dating. Though I never listened to their podcast, could it not just as easily be a fun picture they took while out on something for their podcast?

I’m a big fan of Oh No Ross and Carrie, and if that photo is indeed indicative of a romantic relationship between Radford and Karen, then there are so many damn photos that could indicate the same between Ross and Carrie, even though Ross is married and Carrie has a boyfriend.

Granted, that’s an anecdote and neither data nor evidence, but I fail to see how this picture is proof of anything other than the fact that there was a point when Radford and Karen had a friendlier relationship.

2. The hand… am I the only one who doesn’t think the two hands look similar (especially when compared side-by-side)?

3. The more infamous picture… pictures like that seem to be common. It’s possible that the woman was like “okay, you can take a pic, as long as I get to cover my face”. That doesn’t change the fact that sans permission, Radford is literally up shit’s creek without a paddle for posting it, because it’s basically no better than revenge porn (which I do honestly think should be illegal) and is a HUGE violation of privacy no matter who the woman in the photo is., but there’s nothing to say the woman didn’t necessarily disagree with the photo.

That obviously also does not mean that the woman gave her consent to the photo being made public. Allowing a photo of yourself to be taken does not include allowing that photo to be made public. So my speculation about this photo doesn’t actually change the fact that Radford screwed himself by posting it.

Regardless of whether or not Radford wins his legal case, he’s managed to discredit himself in the atheist/skeptic world.

I dunno, have you seen the atheist/skeptic world lately? When people like Grothe, Shermer, and Dunning are still walking around like they own the place, I wonder if there’s ANYTHING these “prominent skeptics” could do to discredit themselves in the eyes of their toadies.

Do you actually believe the crap you’re spouting? Radford has NOT posted evidence of anything online. He has posted a load of crap intended to harass and intimidate Karen. None of it demonstrates his innocence, now does it? And if you think it does, please explain how, because I’m not seeing it. Also, it was others who identified Radford as Karen’s harasser. Karen originally didn’t name Radford. Apparently you were unaware of this?

Fishcake, fuck off you clueless waste of oxygen. How fucked up in the head do you have to be to think this constitutes “actual evidence”? Actual evidence of what exactly, that Stollznow is a lying slut who must have consented to everything? Or that that Radford is a creep with no respect for privacy or boundaries?

That’s how I felt when his lawyers sent that stuff to me. You’re trying to defend your client against a charge of sexual harassment by sending me stuff that says a) she totally had sex outside of wedlock, b) she was once charged with domestic assault (a charge that was dismissed, was sealed, had nothing to do with Radford), and c) you’ve hired some experts to say that some of the email was forged? Even if I completely accepted every single claim, none of it does anything to exonerate Radford.

Did anyone else just make a mental note note that Radford’s defender thinks it is a woman’s job to suffer harassment in silence? When a man decides to abuse us, especially sexually, it is our job to show restraint and keep his shame private for the sake of decency. So remember ladies, clamp down on that shit. Don’t let anyone know that a man is harassing or abusing you in any way, because just using your voice to draw attention to and stop that abuse, means you deserve it and cannot be trusted.

That pearl of wisdom comes from a “skeptic”.

I don’t believe that these brave defenders of Radford think he’s innocent. They’re stupid, but they can’t all be that stupid. I think they just enjoy seeing an uppity woman punished. They know their support is sending a message to all women. They know this is triggering to survivors who have been treated to the same nut and slut treatment. They like cheering for the rapists and sexual harassers and harassing and threatening the women (and men they deem “just as bad as women”) who speak up against them. They get a thrill from being tertiary to women being harmed and silenced.

Radfords attorneys are getting paid to be a part of this shitshow. His defenders are in it for the kicks and because they need the status quo to stay just as it is in order for them to keep getting their kicks.

I don’t know if anyone has pointed this out, but what Radford is doing reminds me of stalking behavior. It appears that Stollznow ended the relationship and Radford reacted to the rejection by harrassing her. I am speculating about who ended the relationship.

There are different types of stalkers

The Rejected Suitor

Sometimes a partner rejected by their spouse or lover may vacillate between overtures of reconciliation and revenge. They have a narcissistic sense of entitlement and believe that this is the only relationship they are going to have. More than 80% of rejected stalkers in Mullen’s study had personality disorders.

The Resentful Stalker

These individuals express anger in response to a perception that they have been humiliated or treated unfairly by the object of their obsession. They thrive on having a sense of power and control over their victim. They often see themselves as the victim.

I am not saying that Radford is any of the above because I have not done a psych evaluation on him. Based on the accusations and how Radford is reacting is consistent with stalking behavior.

I don’t believe that these brave defenders of Radford think he’s innocent. They’re stupid, but they can’t all be that stupid.

I honestly don’t think they actually believe most of what they say. But as much as they go on about “reason” and “truth,” they couldn’t give two shits about either. They care about feeling (and looking) superior and they’re willing to use any means necessary to do so.

Karen airs her accusations in public, and you all gleefully repeat and share and retweet these accusations (never once bothering to add the word “alleged”) for weeks on end. That’s all fine a good, apparently. But posting actual evidence in response – total violation of privacy and should have saved it for a court of law.

How is a public accusation a violation of privacy? It isn’t. It really isn’t. The photo Radford released, however, is. We condemn the latter as a violation of privacy; the former, not being a violation of privacy, is not condemned on such grounds. Furthermore, the photo is not evidence that sexual harassment/assault did not occur. It’s not evidence; its not relevant. Its only a violation of privacy, and nothing more.

Radford posted the photos etc to continue his campaign of intimidation. He’s not trying to make a case for his innocence. I suspect he knows that ship has sailed. He also knows he can still hurt his victim. So, the punishment continues. He’s slimier than pond scum.

This disgusting display on Radford’s part was clearly orchestrated at least in part by his legal team, I’d reckon. Not a single opportunity to slime Karen is left unexercised.

In any even, they’re clearly expecting a fight now, as it subtly discourages us from contributing to her legal fund:

Framing the lawsuit against her for defamation and fraud as “Giving a Voice to Harassment Victims,” Stollznow raises nearly $50,000 (and counting) for her legal fees. In fact Stollznow may not need the money; she has asked her homeowners insurance to pay for her legal defense.

Good grief. What homeowner’s insurance has riders for defamation lawsuit defense?

None.

She may have a personal liability insurance policy (I sure do) that might cover something like that. Different thing. Different premium. My policy is underwritten by the same company that provides me homeowner’s coverage. But it’s different. And if I were in the situation she’s in and had a personal liability policy, you’re darn straight that I’d be contacting the insurance company and inquiring about the policy coverages and limitations. That’s what the policy is for.

I just now successfully inserted a message (a copy of my receipt from lunch today) backdated to 1997 into my Gmail inbox. It would be simple to prove the timestamps were forged, with access to Google’s mail logs, but that’s not the access the forensics lab had.

Are you talking about the message “Date” header, which is indeed trivial to forge? Or are you talking about the various SMTP “Received” headers? Those are easy to fake if you have the message on your hard drive, but I don’t know (not that there isn’t) a way to edit those headers on Gmail’s own server. If you weren’t looking at them, an ordinary Gmail user can see the full headers by clicking “Show Original” under the “More” drop-down.

If you can edit the full SMTP headers of a message in your Gmail account, I’m curious how. I don’t know of a way to get messages in without sending them through Gmail’s own MTA, which will add its own “Received” headers.

NOTE! NONE OF THIS IS A DEFENSE OF RADFORD! I’m not claiming that his consultants are right, or that any emails are or aren’t forged, or anything else. I’m only curious whether it’s as easy to backdate an email (including the “Received” headers) as Josh indicated.

Wait, if Radford’s employer spent 40k on experts who didn’t notice an allegedly blatant forgery, what does it say about his employer?
Why is he still working for people who treated him that unfairly?
Why is he still working for people who are that incompetent?
Why is he still working for people who suspended him unjustly and then apparently made him sign a gag order?
Looks like two can play that game, Mr. Radford.

Also, what does Karen Stollznow gain by this? She could have signed the “retraction”, which would have made life much easier for her. Especially if her case was such an obvious case of fraud and defamation. Many people would have believed the “could not fight back because money and mental health” argument. She would have been the double victim of harassment and being silenced by a more powerful guy. Instead she chose to fight.
Just use the sharp razor…

Even if I completely accepted every single claim, none of it does anything to exonerate Radford.

No, don’t you see, there are only two options. Either Radford is completely right or Stollznow is. So if Radford pokes enough holes and exposes enough anomalies in Stollznow’s story, it proves that Creationism is true. I mean Radford’s story. Sorry, typo.

I think they’re trying to insinuate that she has this $50K+ fighting fund to gain. The fact that any not spent on her legal costs is going to Colorado’s Sexual Assault Victim Advocate Center seemingly escapes them.

Also worth noting about the photo of Radford in bed: he’s claiming that the photo establishes that their relationship continued when Stollznow claimed it hadn’t, except he erased the metadata establishing the date the photo was taken.

One more time. WHY forge the year on a collection of emails? If you knew both your email and the recipient’s person’s email accounts would be investigated, that would be a very dumb thing to do. Why bother?

If you were dumb enough to think you could get away with it, why would you only change the year and not the contents of the email? Obsessively, systematically forging the year each email was sent one at a time without bothering to change anything else?

What Ben claims Karen did makes no damn sense. On his defense page, he constantly tells us “Karen says…” and then provides documents where Karen says something completely different. His reading comprehension and communication skills are less than stellar. Why the hell are we all assuming Ben understands the independent investigator’s report, and why the hell are we all assuming he’s accurately representing what was in the report?

WHY THE HELL is anyone taking Ben at his word that these emails and the associated dates were in the report or important in any way? His what he’s claiming actually makes no damn sense, and even with the most charitable interpretation, he’s terrible at communicating.

The more infamous picture… pictures like that seem to be common. It’s possible that the woman was like “okay, you can take a pic, as long as I get to cover my face”.

Help me out here. What reason would he have to take such a photo – other than as evidence so he could brag to his dudebros “look, I managed to get a woman into my bed” or “look, I managed to get this particular woman into my bed”…?

Also worth noting about the photo of Radford in bed: he’s claiming that the photo establishes that their relationship continued when Stollznow claimed it hadn’t, except he erased the metadata establishing the date the photo was taken.

Well, if he scrubbed the exif, he can’t prove anything at all. Goodness, what a genius. <near fatal eyeroll>

Radford posted the photos etc to continue his campaign of intimidation. He’s not trying to make a case for his innocence. I suspect he knows that ship has sailed. He also knows he can still hurt his victim. So, the punishment continues.

Oh, fucking hell. You’re not only right, but you made me think something more sinister still may be at work here. Does Radford have more pictures? We now know (if we didn’t before) that he violates boundaries AND that he likes to take photographic trophies.

If he has more, then publishing this one really is sending the message he can still hurt his victim. It could be an outright threat that more are forthcoming if Ms Stollznow doesn’t yield to his intimidation.

What reason would he have to take such a photo – other than as evidence so he could brag to his dudebros “look, I managed to get a woman into my bed” or “look, I managed to get this particular woman into my bed”…?

People like to take photos of themselves. There are pictures of me and my friends spending time together. Partners sometimes take pictures of themselves being intimate. There doesn’t need to be any specific purpose besides “We’re having fun, let’s take a picture.”

If he has more, then publishing this one really is sending the message he can still hurt his victim. It could be an outright threat that more are forthcoming if Ms Stollznow doesn’t yield to his intimidation.

Oh, no. Yeah, that could have been a direct threat lobbed straight at her like a supersonic dog whistle nobody else can hear. What a piece of shit.

No, don’t you see, there are only two options. Either Radford is completely right or Stollznow is. So if Radford pokes enough holes and exposes enough anomalies in Stollznow’s story, it proves that Creationism is true. I mean Radford’s story. Sorry, typo.

People like to take photos of themselves. There are pictures of me and my friends spending time together. […] There doesn’t need to be any specific purpose besides “We’re having fun, let’s take a picture.”

Yeah, “let’s take a picture so we can look at it later and remember the fun we had”. That’s the kind of picture where everyone smiles and looks straight at the camera… as opposed to trying to hide their face.

Partners sometimes take pictures of themselves being intimate.

As opposed to “one of them takes pictures of both with less than enthusiastic consent from the other”…

And it’s only the modification date and creation date that are missing; the rest of the exif data is still there.

Ah. Even so, it’s evident he tampered with the exif, so he can’t claim “proof!”. (As a photographer myself, exif data is close to sacred. I do understand some people scrubbing it off photos posted to the net, but tampering with it certainly makes Radford look even worse.)

That’s probably not the case. There may be a series of pictures in the same lighting shot with the same camera (look for dead pixels in the same places, finger smudges, etc) surrounding the original. There may be an uncropped unmodified full resolution version of the original, too.

I got in an internet pissing contest with an image-stealer once, who challenged me to prove I had shot the image I was claiming as mine. So I posted a thumbnail sheet of the image and all the surrounding images, including one of me talking to one of the people in the photo, during a break. Then I asked him to post the same – since, if he was the originator of the photos, he’d have similar … oops.

There may be a series of pictures in the same lighting shot with the same camera (look for dead pixels in the same places, finger smudges, etc) surrounding the original. There may be an uncropped unmodified full resolution version of the original, too.

He had a 3rd party look at the exif data to declare the date authentic. The best they were able to establish was that the photo was taken before April 19, 2010. Radford is claiming April 16th, 2010.

By default, digital cameras save the creation date in the EXIF data block, which means his third-party should have been able to give a precise date. So either:

1. They ignored the creation date, recognizing how easy it is to forge, and used other means to date the photo.
2. Radford scrubbed the creation date before handing it over, forcing this third party to use other means to date the photo.
3. Radford modifies his cameras so that they do not save the creation date, forcing this third party to use other means to date the photo.

There may be a series of pictures in the same lighting shot with the same camera (look for dead pixels in the same places, finger smudges, etc) surrounding the original.

[forehead smack], ugh, I forgot about dead pixels. You’d need quite a few photos to do that, and even then you’re relying on the metadata of the comparison photos to be accurate. Dead pixels can also vary with temperature and exposure level, which makes them very tricky to deal with.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend, Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

So I hate to be so late to the party, and so relatively threadrupt, but I have to address something. Hand me my ass if I’m rehashing something dealt with after 140 or so.

@Robert Blaskiewicz

Let’s say that Radford wins, no matter how. The discussions about him on this and other forums are likely to influence the compensation he gets because the lawsuit is in large part about reputation. Discussions like this are, let’s face it, material evidence in his favor if he wins. So you better be damned sure about what you say, because it’s not your ass on the line; it’s Karen’s.

I believe it was chigau @115 that asked if this Robert is a lawyer.

He is clearly not a competent lawyer, that’s all I can say.

Reputation is almost never the largest component of damages. Reputation is a proxy for economic damage. If there is no economic damage, there will be no reputation damage in any jurisdiction of which I’m aware. Some damages are easy to quantify. If you lose a job because of someone’s lies, you can tally up your wages times hours normally worked in a week times of weeks of lost work at time of judgement.

Say, however, that you write bestsellers. Someone’s lies about you hit the news. Your last book had fallen off the best seller list and your new one isn’t out yet. Your name in the news actually produced an uptick in sales, landing you on the bottom edge of the list for an extra week or two, but then it falls off again and its sales are lower than before the bump. When the new book eventually comes out, it doesn’t do as well as the last one. At contract renewal time, your offers aren’t as good as before. Is this due to book sales? How do you know if the people who didn’t buy your book didn’t buy it because of someone’s lies? This is very tricky territory to enumerate, and so is squashed into “reputation” (in some jurisdictions).

So: Radford.

Is his compensation dependent on sales of things with his name attached? Are the people in this thread the intended market?
Are any of the participants in this conversation people who have paid Radford for speaking gigs in the past but who decline to hire him for speaking gigs in the future?
What, precisely, is the connection between people having a low opinion of Radford and his wealth, freedom, and enjoyment of same?
If Radford goes to a psych because of distress or illness as a result of people having a low opinion of him, that’s not damage to reputation. That’s direct economic damage that’s enumerable.

Further:

Discussions like this are, let’s face it, material evidence in his favor if he wins.

Bwahahahahahaha!

Discussions like this? This is about our low opinion of him based on Radford’s own actions! This thread is about Radford publicly releasing a photo that appears to be taken without the consent of a bed-partner and releasing it to the entire internet.

The horrid feelings that we have as a result of Radford publicly being an ass are likely not very relevant unless there is some reputation damage and it’s proven that we in this thread are decision makers affecting Radford’s well-being. Even then, it’s evidence **for Stollznow** as it’s evidence that Radford has made hash of his reputation all on his own. If there is reputation damage (in the legal sense, which would require that Radford first prove that Stollznow lied), and if we are decision makers affecting Radford’s well being (I know I’m not, but I’m speaking generally here), this thread is evidence that it would be impossible to disentangle the reputation damage Radford himself caused from the reputation damage Stollznow caused. He just made it massively harder to prove damages by being a jerk in public. And the more people who show up here to comment on his public jerkiness the smaller the number of people Radford can prove acted against his interests because of Stollznow and not because of Radford himself.

I don’t mind ignorance. I’m ignorant of far too many things.

Arrogant ignorance where you go off on topics which you clearly don’t understand? That I mind.

Reference specific case law on reputation from the competent jurisdiction supporting your statement that would be bullshit in almost every other jurisdiction or stop flagging your ignorance as if it were superior knowledge to be used as a wise guide to commenting here.

Though the original images were no longer contained on the Olympus camera’s memory card (having been taken nearly four years ago), the creation dates of the image files indicate that the photographs could not have been taken any later than that April 19, 2010, and is consistent with Mr. Radford’s claim that the images were taken on April 16. While it is technically possible to falsify such file creation data, I found no evidence of any manipulation and believe them to be correct and accurate.

It’s not clear what “file creation data” is being referred to. My guess is that the “file creation data” is the date the file was stored on a computer (i.e. stored April 19th, 2010, so it must have been taken before that date). Checking some photos on my computer, this seems plausible. I have several photo’s on my desktop. The computer reports that the files were created on April 1st, while the exif data and file modification date report the images were taken on March 29. The modification date seems to be drawing from the exif data. If that exif data didn’t exist when the 3rd party analysed the files, all that would be present would be the file creation date.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend, Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

It’s not clear what “file creation data” is being referred to. My guess is that the “file creation data” is the date the file was stored on a computer (i.e. stored April 19th, 2010, so it must have been taken before that date).

That’s my guess too. Trouble is… file creation and access times are easy to modify. There’s actually a command for that purpose, so you don’t even have to be a “hacker.” Taking a page from Josh L’s book, I just set the creation date/time of one of my wedding photos to the exact time of my birth, proving that I was married sometime before I was born.

I’ve been reading this thread and not commenting, because everyone else has said what I want to say but better than I would (and I’ve learnt things! Thanks Marcus Ranum, Hj Hornbeck, and others), but I’d just like to add my voice to the chorus of ‘that’s an incredibly shitty thing to do’. (Understatement, I know.)

File creation date is the time at which the file was first created by the operating system (this is the same in both UNIX and Windows)
File modification date is the time at which the file was last opened in read/write/append mode.
Some image card unloaders, like Downloader Pro, have the option to set the file creation time to the time the photo was taken. Typically amateur snapshotters don’t use this, but it’s extremely useful for wedding photographers or journalists who may not unload their cards right away. Downloader also allows you to set values in your exif data for your own search (I stick my copyright in)

There is often substantial lag between when an image was shot and when it was downloaded or transferred (think: syncing from your camera roll on your iPhone to your computer via iTunes)

The utimes() system call can be used to adjust any/all of a file’s dates. Typically there aren’t user-friendly tools for doing this though various hacker’s toolkits have the capability. Another way of resetting a file’s date is to change the system time, create a copy (which gets a new creation date) then delete the original and rename.

Metadata, metadata, metadata! I love me some metadata. I doubt any of this is going to be relevant to anything. The interesting questions that will be asked about the report are not whether it’s accurate but why CFI did/didn’t do anything as a consequence of it.

As an attorney and someone curious enough to track down Ben’s “Response” page, let me address a few of these strategy comments. The first and most critical issue in many cases is credibility. Doubly so in rape and harassment cases (i.e., he said/she said). This appears to be the somewhat unusual case (yes, unusual, at least from my experience) that will boil down to the question: “Who is lying?” In many cases, the facts aren’t heavily disputed, and the issue is applying those facts to the law, and in other cases, there are significant factual disputes that ultimately appear to be based upon differences of interpretation.

Thus, the overt strategy of Ben’s website is to support their claim that Karen has lied about many facts in her allegations against him, most notably an apparent claim that in 2009 she ended their sexual relationship and steadfastly rebuffed any overtures made by him (and I can’t find a copy of her exact allegations). The logic is that if she lied about important facts 1-5, then she very likely lied about related facts 6 and 7 (which happened in a he said/she said environment). I remember that there were some allegations about public harassment, but I don’t see his website addressing them, so his strategy may be to ignore those claims for now (or I just missed it).

With that in mind, most of his decisions on the website actually make some sense. He’s not overtly arguing that she “had sex out of wedlock” but that they had consensual sex well after she claimed they stopped and after she claimed to have cut him out of her life. He’s bringing up the domestic assault charge because it appears that during it, her husband claims that she has made false allegations against him and others. I think Ben may have even claimed that she acknowledged making a false claim or something, but I don’t want to go back to look it up. And email forgery speaks for itself. Now, I’m sure he’s happy to accept the by-products of a slut-shaming and victim-blaming culture, but at face value, that is not the argument he is making, nor is it an argument that he would need to make to win.

As for putting this out in public, I also wouldn’t have much trouble with it as a lawyer for Radford because he is a public figure, and he is already being tried in the court of public opinion (and it looks like he is losing). While it would help my job as a lawyer to have him hold all of these issues for discovery and trial, a real counselor might agree that Radford has to do more than win at trial to come out even or ahead on this matter. I’d probably start demanding an hourly rate, but I could see myself permitting him to post this information if I vetted it first. I can’t imagine letting him post the picture itself, although I would permit him to post a description of it and a link to the alleged verification of its time.

In the end, after reading some of Ben’s website, it looks like someone is very likely lying about the emails (either Karen post-dated them to make Ben look bad, or Ben back-dated them to make himself seem innocent). Hopefully, a qualified expert can get to the bottom of that and prove who is lying. And while it is possible that the person lying about the emails is telling the truth on other matters, it won’t matter to a jury or judge. My view is the case will rise or fall completely on what a forensic review of the emails accounts shows. For better or worse, I think that makes this is a pretty simple case at heart.

You really think this is a contingency fee case right now? What lawyer takes a civil defamation case against an individual plaintiff without an hourly rate? There’s no way Stollznow’s pockets are deep enough and the case is solid enough to justify a contingency fee arrangement.

@AMM, Radford is suing for 1) defamation; 2)fraud; and 3)Interference with beneficial contractual relations in New Mexico state court. Your best bet to understand what the burden of proof is is to examine the New Mexico Civil Jury Instructions.

Whois data on the server shows that the domain was registered on January 20th 2014, and updated March 22nd 2014. I presume the update was to point it to the GoDaddy servers where the domain is now also hosted as well as being registered. He registered the domain well in advance of any other telegraphs of legal action, and started hosting services the same day as making the “retraction” public. My guess is he was using the website as a negotiating bargaining chip to get them to settle, to sign the “retraction”, or else the “bomb” would be dropped and all his evidence would be made public.

And I had a look at the times Radford uploaded the images to that website. Of “the 64 it contains, 59 date from February 17th and March 5th, with none dating earlier and the remainder dating after March 30th.”

It looks like legal blackmail was his plan, from the very start.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend, Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

I just can’t be bothered to go read his complaint. His own actions have proven him a jerk, I don’t need or want to read his complaint unless and until there’s a Stollznow response that refers to aspects of the complaint I would then need to see to understand. Even then, I’m not sure I’ll read Stollznow’s complaint, so the odds that I’ll ever read the complaint are low.

But knowing the jurisdiction of the complaint and the BoP issues involved? That’s useful to me. So thanks very, very much for providing the info and link.

Of course, knowing the lex forum doesn’t always tell you everything you need to know about what law applies, but it’s literally the only place to start.

In California, Utah, Idaho, Texas, or New Jersey posting of explicit photos with the intent to injure someone’s reputation is a crime. The laws are called “revenge porn” laws.

Apparently, more are needed, and enforcement of course is going to be about as easy as every other crime of this nature.

The poster’s state of residence is the controlling factor, not the victim’s. So, if Radford lives in California, he’s just committed a crime. And if not, has probably just launched a legislative action campaign in the state that he does live in.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend, Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

My #316 was for qwints, a thoughtful and informed commenter, whose ‘nym is not in the computer dictionary, not quints, whatever the heck that is/they are, which despite their relative uselessness to this discussion are in the computer’s dictionary.

In the end, after reading some of Ben’s website, it looks like someone is very likely lying about the emails (either Karen post-dated them to make Ben look bad, or Ben back-dated them to make himself seem innocent).

Except it’s the emails themselves that make Radford look bad, not the dates on them. They’re creepy, stalker, harassing emails whenever they were sent. “You still love me. I can hear it in your voice” is fucking disturbing whenever it was written, especially as between people with a workplace relationship.

What’s supposed to be the motivation for Stollznow postdating that? It shows harassment whenever it was written! It labels Radford as an abusive, manipulative ex, whenever it was sent. How is quibbling over the date a defense for him when it constitutes an admission that he sent the email and harassed her?

Marcus @ 309, I use IrfanView, and you can manipulate exif data like crazy with it, if you like, and they have multiple plug-ins for exif as well. You certainly don’t need to be a hacker, or know much at all to change things about.

My guess is that the “file creation data” is the date the file was stored on a computer (i.e. stored April 19th, 2010, so it must have been taken before that date). Checking some photos on my computer, this seems plausible. … If that exif data didn’t exist when the 3rd party analysed the files, all that would be present would be the file creation date.

Putting a precise date on something is very, very hard in the digital age.

THIS.

That’s why it keeps coming back to logs. Logs are computer files, so they’re as easy to fake as anything else–except for one thing. The logs belong to someone else, who isn’t a party to the lawsuit. Changing gmail logs requires hacking Google in some way, whether it’s cracking their computers or bribing a sysadmin. The third party aspect means that the logs are effectively held in “escrow,” and their reliability is exactly as good as Google’s (or whoever’s logs they are). And often the trail will involve multiple logs. At minimum, one at the sender’s provider and one at the recipient’s.

….file creation dates seem like they’d be trivial to falsify given a fair amount of computer experience. Couldn’t you just directly edit the file header? Is that information actually stored elsewhere?

There’s all kinds of other places where relevant stuff is stored, but it gets harder and harder to dig it up and prove it.

First off there’s always system logs. Again, suppose you create the file, rename it, whatever – on some operating systems that gets recorded. On my desktop Windows installs, that is disabled to keep log management from becoming a problem. There are other things that record relevant information, and some of them could be quite, quite fun. For example, UNIX systems record system login/logout times – it would sure be problematic if someone back-dated a file to a time when they weren’t logged into the computer in order to create it in the first place. :) Or if a building has entry/exit records and the person was not in the building at the time when the file was allegedly created. Imagine the fun if some fool back-dated a photo of himself making out with someone, to a day when they were out of the country speaking at a conference somewhere 7,000 miles from that person. Another fun thing to look for is the dates on the directory where the file is found: suppose you have a directory that was created in July 2013 and some of the files in it are listing a creation date of August 2011. Sure, they could have been moved there but… Unfortunately UNIX no longer issue inode numbers sequentially, but it used to. Windows may have other filesystem properties like that, that you could look at; I’m not a Windows filesystem maven. Metadata, metadata, yummy metadata! It’s everywhere!

Another question I’d ask is whether he sent that picture to anyone else. That’d be a perfectly creeper sort of thing to do, which would cement a file date pretty nicely.

@312 — It was intended as something of a quip. I agree with you (and I don’t do contingency cases anyway).

@311 — You are right about the basic claims that BR has to prove, but “relevance” in the legal world essentially means any fact that has “any tendency to make a fact [of consequence] more or less probable than it would be without the evidence.” So, it can be broad (and subject to logical fallacies, unfortunately), and credibility is always a fact of consequence.

re: burden of proof: I don’t know what state law will apply, but generally with respect to a public figure (and I think BR qualifies), truth isn’t a defense as much as falsity is an element of the claim. So, if I were Karen’s lawyer, I would be arguing that BR has to prove it was false, not that KS has to prove it was true. Obviously, in a case like this, the party carrying the burden of proof makes a pretty big difference.

re: actual malice: As stated above, I think BR would be a public figure and the “actual malice” standard should apply, but that doesn’t mean much in this case. Actual malice exists when the person knows the facts stated are untrue or has a careless disregard of the truth. So in the case of a newspaper reporter, it is really helpful (“I was just reporting what the person claimed was true.”) But the case of KS, who is both the alleged victim and the defendant, if a jury thinks the statements are false, it will by necessity also conclude that she knew they were false.

re: naming BR: I don’t think it will make much of a difference for several reasons. (1) Not naming someone is not a defense if the person is reasonably identifiable from the statement (and BR obviously was); and (2) she named BR in these claims to CFI and to individuals, which I assume he has included in the lawsuit.

Logs are computer files, so they’re as easy to fake as anything else–except for one thing. The logs belong to someone else, who isn’t a party to the lawsuit.

Oh, but logs aren’t that easy to change. You need to not simply alter something, you need to alter it consistently with what would have happened, which means getting everything in the correct sequence with the correct inter-event timing. Google runs all their systems sync’d to satellite clocks with NTP, so you’ve got timing down to the millisecond to worry about.

Doing that kind of analysis gets insanely technical. I can’t imagine it ever being worth it for this kind of thing (but that’s basically the kind of analysis that the satellite guys have been doing to try to figure out where the Malaysian airliner went – they’re trying to use message inter-arrival times in system logs as a sort of GPS. It’s brilliant!)

@320 — Good point. Either that particular email was not on Ben’s website, or I just didn’t notice it in skimming through (there is a lot posted). As creepy as it sounds, though, it has a very different interpretation if sent in the middle of an up-and-down relationship instead of 2 years after a relationship was completely cut off. And of course, if it doesn’t make a difference, why would KS change the date (which I’m not concluding she did; that’s just the question to ask if she did)? Again, the dates on the email may not answer all the questions, but I’d eat my hat if the person proven correct on the dates of the emails doesn’t win the case or get a very favorable settlement.

Yep. I use Irfanview, too. And it looks really bad if you manipulate the EXIF data of a file to show it was created on 11/05/2013 while the operating system’s file creation time shows it was created on 11/05/2014 and your facebook page for that day shows you were in Germany. :)

File timestamps can be fudged as easily as EXIF timestamps. Putting a precise date on something is very, very hard in the digital age.

I’m not saying the file creation date is accurate, I’m saying that it seems to be all to which the 3rd party investigator had access. If they had the exif data, they could pinpoint an exact date. With just a file creation date, all they can say is the latest possible date the photo was taken. My point is that, even assuming that file creation date is accurate, it doesn’t not establish a relationship in April of 2010.

boyofd @327: That email was one of the ones from the “expert” report supporting Radford’s claim about the dates. Many of the emails in that report are similarly creepy and harassing, whenever they were sent. They may be worse long after a break-up than shortly after one, but they’re bad at any time regardless.

There have been times when my computer’s clock was not synchronized to an online clock, and after some reset or other winds up years out-of-sync. Every file created or modified during that time will have the screwed-up time. It’s pretty easy to set this up intentionally, then change back. Heck, I’m pretty sure this was a critical clue in an episode of Murder She Wrote…

I have a question for the tech savvy people in this thread, if you’d indulge me: Would migrating from another email host to gmail have an effect on the timestamps? Because Jason noted that CFI migrated in 2012 to gmail and used another email provider before then and I have no clue about these technical things.

@320 — Good point. Either that particular email was not on Ben’s website, or I just didn’t notice it in skimming through (there is a lot posted). As creepy as it sounds, though, it has a very different interpretation if sent in the middle of an up-and-down relationship instead of 2 years after a relationship was completely cut off. And of course, if it doesn’t make a difference, why would KS change the date (which I’m not concluding she did; that’s just the question to ask if she did)? Again, the dates on the email may not answer all the questions, but I’d eat my hat if the person proven correct on the dates of the emails doesn’t win the case or get a very favorable settlement.

….Have you been in an up-and-down, on-and-off relationship? I have. When you’re clearly off, down, and trying to make a break and the man says shit like that, it’s still extremely fucking creepy. It has a very….desperate and controlling vibe about it. It’s a “You can’t quit me and I won’t let you go. I’ll use your emotions against you”.

And quite frankly, it’s fucking disturbing having to explain this shit. Can’t people, I dunno, actually try to put themselves in other people’s shoes and empathize? Instead, there’s let’s explain and discuss why Radford isn’t such a bad guy. Let’s give him so many outs, possibilities, and excuses. Must the cis white male experience always be the default and considered first? Must we bend over backwards for him and dissolve into analyzing the victim, just like he planned?

Would migrating from another email host to gmail have an effect on the timestamps?

Probably not; the initial message timestamps would be read out of the message headers by gmail and that would be used to set the date.

That raises a question – how were the messages moved to gmail? It’s possible that it was done the “low rent” way, in which a user sets up an IMAP client, sucks down their messages, then sets up IMAP at gmail and pushes them up. The timestamps in the message headers wouldn’t get changed (shouldn’t, anyhow) but there would be interesting logs. The backup tapes of the old mail server would be conclusive; presumably whoever shut that system down would have not just tossed that tape in a dumpster. If the earlier provider was a professional provider, they might well have backups and backups of the logs, even going back to then. As always, “it depends” Since this isn’t a criminal case, getting FBI to show up with a warrant isn’t an option (it would be highly unlikely anyway unless there was murder or huge amounts of money involved…) An attorney involved in the case could try to contact the compliance officers at google and the earlier provider, to see what might be available. It shouldn’t surprise anyone to realize that google gets a huge amount of this kind of stuff, and has a substantial team and process in place to deal with it.

“You still love me. I can hear it in your voice” is fucking disturbing whenever it was written, especially as between people with a workplace relationship.

Amusingly, that particular email was not established by the forensic analysis to have been sent in 2010. They only claim 2 sets of emails bearing particular subject headings were really sent in 2010. The “You still love me” email was not among them.

And, for the record, I don’t give a shit about the details of this case. Radford’s first mistake was trying to get involved with a co-worker, which is just stupid. There’s compounded stupid after that, and then nastiness. The stupid and nasty is coming from the direction of Radford. That’s all I need to know; I hope he loses quickly and thoroughly.

Oh, but logs aren’t that easy to change. You need to not simply alter something, you need to alter it consistently with what would have happened, which means getting everything in the correct sequence with the correct inter-event timing.

That’s not particularly difficult–remember, you have computers to assist with the tampering as well. A good first approximation is to take the relevant log entries, subtract 78,840,000 seconds from every single timestamp, and reinsert them at the correct position in the logs. You’ve just backdated everything 2 1/2 years, and preserved all of the sequencing and inter-event timing.

It gets increasingly complex the more logs you’re tampering with, but it also gets increasingly expensive to include them in the forensics. Fixing everything is impossible, but it’s not usually necessary either.

@327 — I’m not sure where I disagreed with you. Saying one sent during the relationship is markedly different in type from one sent after the relationship has been terminated is not saying it isn’t creepy or emotionally exploitative. In fact, I said it was creepy. However, from a legal standpoint the second might be actionable, but the first one plainly isn’t.

And while I haven’t been in one of those relationships, I can empathize quite a bit and have seen the inside of a lot of strange, dysfunctional relationships as an attorney. I’m not explaining anything about whether BR is a bad guy or not, and in fact, even if he didn’t harass KS, it sounds like there is plenty of other evidence that he is a DB. But if he is correct that she is lying about their relationship and actively forging dates on emails to make him look bad/worse (which has not been proven at all, but should be task #1 for both sets of lawyers, in my view), in what universe could the fact that KS was involved in a roller-coaster relationship a defense to what she’s done? Again, as I read it, he is staking a bold claim — KS not only lied, but actively lied by changing dates on emails. If true, who could believe KS about any of this? If false (meaning that BR has now changed dates on the same emails), who could believe BR about any of this?

Whether BR is a DB is a separate question that I don’t care much about since I’d never heard of him until this.

You’ve just backdated everything 2 1/2 years, and preserved all of the sequencing and inter-event timing.

And there’s absolutely no value in doing that. So why would anyone do it, other than to try (and fail) to show they know something about syslogs on a blog?

A more interesting example would be if you wanted to delete 5 lines in 3 different locations from a log file. Well, you can’t just go null the lines out in the existing logfile, because logfiles don’t have nulls. You have to actually create a new logfile with the omitted lines, then swap the new one for the old one, which means kicking syslogd, which creates a log message when it restarts. Oops, better fake a crash instead. So you do that by writing a bunch of stuff into kernel memory so the system panics. That also terminates your administrative login. Uh, yeah, you’re almost there except now there are free blocks of log data on the hard disk from where you deleted the old file. That’ll all be gone in a couple days or weeks depending on system load. But even in that scenario I can think of a couple ways that I would still catch it in about 10 minutes. :) Can you think of them? I bet not, which means I’d win.

For those addressing the forensic issues, thank you. I find it interesting, although I have not read all of them. Still, I haven’t noticed anyone pointing out that KS’s emails apparently came from her berkeley.edu address. Would KS have the ability to change the dates on those emails in the log entries or metadata without access to Berkeley’s server (which I am doubting she had)? If so, can’t we speculate that a review of the Berkeley server will answer all of our questions about when the emails were sent? BR certainly didn’t have access to them and KS probably didn’t have access to them. If the emails or logs still exist in the servers, won’t that take care of everything?

KS’s emails apparently came from her berkeley.edu address. Would KS have the ability to change the dates on those emails in the log entries or metadata without access to Berkeley’s server

If one was pulling them down via POP or IMAP they could edit them on their local hard drive, yes. If it’s an IMAP server it could even be put back after being altered, but that’d be tricky and would leave logs. If they were using some kind of webmail interface they’d have a copy they could edit HTML in but that wouldn’t even alter the version on the server. But the logs at Berkely would be conclusive. I don’t know Berkeley’s log retention policy but their compliance officer could tell an attorney involved with the case, once presented with all the proper magic handshakes.

I repeat: all you need is the message-ID which is contained in the email, then you grep the ID from the logs on the sending and receiving MTAs. They would agree. And that’s the end of that.

But if he is correct that she is lying about their relationship and actively forging dates on emails to make him look bad/worse (which has not been proven at all, but should be task #1 for both sets of lawyers, in my view), in what universe could the fact that KS was involved in a roller-coaster relationship a defense to what she’s done? Again, as I read it, he is staking a bold claim — KS not only lied, but actively lied by changing dates on emails. If true, who could believe KS about any of this? If false (meaning that BR has now changed dates on the same emails), who could believe BR about any of this?

That’s more or less my take on it, as well. There is a lot shit smeared around on Radford’s “Burn Book” site, but that forgery issue is a make or break. There’s a third possibility that’s been articulated pretty well by Justin over at his Lousy Canuck blog: that the CFI investigators screwed up the dates. Stollznow said that she gave them access to the emails and had no involvement beyond that.

Nevertheless, the allegation of forgery is explosive. If it’s true that someone on team Stollznow actually edited the dates of the emails and gave them to Radford’s employer, that’s fucked up (and it is important to state that this is far, FAR, from having been established). And, of course, it has to be mentioned clearly that this would not exonerate or justify Radford’s behavior, it would just add another dirty player to the game. It can both be true that Radford sexually harassed and assaulted Dr. Stollznow and Dr. Stollznow engaged in malicious activity directed at harming Radford’s employment.

@345 — Man, just when I think I can safely assert a true dichotomy, someone comes along to bust it up. Maybe there is a third explanation for the changed dates. I guess we could see what KS said about the timing of some of these communications in her allegations to CFI and her posted allegations, but maybe this won’t be as easy as I thought.

So let me get this straight: KS has sufficient technical expertise to alter dates/times of certain emails to successfully misrepresent them to CFI’s $40K investigation, but not enough to hide what she did from BR, his lawyer, their consultants.

Uh-huh. Well, then that outside investigation company isn’t going to have many clients in the future.

I have not seen the photograph, so, grain of salt, but Marcus Ranum’s comment about photographic context from the same camera made me wonder — could someone Google up other photographs of Ben Radford in mid-April 2010, and earlier in 2009, and establish that he does or does not look substantially the same (haircut, clothing (if he’s shirtless, is his shirt visible anywhere in the picture? ), other facial marks like pimples or shaving scars) in the photo he posted?

Just thinking out loud.

The only reason I can think of to scrub the dates from the EXIF data is because the camera’s clock was not set correctly in the first place, and he feared his case being undermined. But it still seems dishonest to do that rather than honestly post that he didn’t set the camera time correctly.

The fact that the filestamp shows an April 2010 date when the photograph EXIF data has been modified looks like it almost entirely proves that Radford has knowledge of photograph and file dates, and the expertise to manipulate them.

So let me get this straight: KS has sufficient technical expertise to alter dates/times of certain emails to successfully misrepresent them to CFI’s $40K investigation, but not enough to hide what she did from BR, his lawyer, their consultants.

And then she’s stupid enough to let this go to court instead of just signing the agreement and claiming she couldn’t afford the lawsuit.
Because she’s apparently still so crazy about him that she will kill her career and probably marriage and lose all her friends just to get her 15 minutes of fame and hurt him some more.
Sounds reasonable, does it? Because she has so much to win in going on with this, right?
While Radford OTOH, can only win. If he loses then everybody knows what they knew already. If he wins, well, the winner takes it all..

I think that’s why by far the most believable explanation of the date discrepancy is that CFI screwed it up when they took the messages from KS’s inbox and put them in the report.

I do find it highly suspicious that Radford decided to include a copy of the exhibit showing the emails CFI found troubling, but didn’t include the entire report. It may very well be that the emails were an afterthought or totally irrelevant to their decisions, in which case the dates are wholly irrelevant unless he can prove that they were malicious doctored by KS, which seems preposterous.

It’s the explosive nature of the claim combined with the rare possibility (in this case) of actually having verifiable data that captures my attention.

Oh, fucking hell. You’re not only right, but you made me think something more sinister still may be at work here. Does Radford have more pictures? We now know (if we didn’t before) that he violates boundaries AND that he likes to take photographic trophies.

If he has more, then publishing this one really is sending the message he can still hurt his victim. It could be an outright threat that more are forthcoming if Ms Stollznow doesn’t yield to his intimidation.

Fuck.

Robert Blaskiewicz says he believes Radford does have more pictures.

“I believe that there are photos of enthusiastic consent that Ben did not post. They’ll be in court, I suspect.”

I have not seen the photograph, so, grain of salt, but Marcus Ranum’s comment about photographic context from the same camera made me wonder — could someone Google up other photographs of Ben Radford in mid-April 2010, and earlier in 2009, and establish that he does or does not look substantially the same (haircut, clothing (if he’s shirtless, is his shirt visible anywhere in the picture? ), other facial marks like pimples or shaving scars) in the photo he posted?

Those are good questions. The other question is where/when exactly this topless escapade occurred. I did look up the picture and I wouldn’t know who’s in it, other than some grinning bald goon. I suspect that the picture in question is just one of several. So there could be all kinds of other context in those as well, it might be possible to recognize a room or a hotel room or something like that. If it was shot in a hotel room then it gets possible to fix the date if it’s a certain hotel where a conference was held at a certain time. Or if it’s someone’s home then where and whoever else might or might not have been around in that time-frame could also help serve to fix the date.

I didn’t see where Radford says “this was shot when we were snuggling in my hotel room after such-and-such-con” which would help fix the date. I suppose that’s because he’s got more.

If he’s the kind of guy who shoots pictures to keep score of his conquests, did he send any to any of his friends (does he have friends?) around the time he took them? That would also fix them in time.

I note that Radford is only in a win/win situation because skeptics support him. If his job and rep was in jeopardy there would be something to lose. But his employers are tacitly giving him a safety line

It’s also possible the image was cropped and resized in irfanview and leaving exif data out of resampled images is an option that might be turned on. I used to strip EXIF all the time because I didn’t see any reason to waste bandwidth sending a bunch of crap about my camera settings and lens out with every photo.

Crip Dyke, Right Reverend, Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaidensays

I concede that there is some form of privacy tort in the US. Apologies for the error.

Your link to the restatement is borked, but not necessary for me. (Others might appreciate a correct link to the restatement here. Noting, of course, that the restatement isn’t law.)

I was trying to figure out how I got the notion, and it looks like I misread an article up here that distinguishes recent Canadian tort law from US tort law.

I’m also wondering – the restatement obviously includes quite a number of statutory issues related to torts. Is it possible that this is a statutory right of action in the US? In Canada people are pretty strict about the distinction between a right of action under statute and under tort. At least in my law school they are. More than one of my classmates has lost points on papers or exams for stating something was a tort when it was a statutory right of action.

In that case, my statement might have been correct – technically – in Canadian lingo, but clearly misleading.

And there’s absolutely no value in doing that. So why would anyone do it, other than to try (and fail) to show they know something about syslogs on a blog? … Can you think of them? I bet not, which means I’d win.

Um, this blog is not a friendly environment in which to try starting a dick-size war. On the one hand, I’m happy to concede that yours is to mine as Tarzan’s mighty vines are to an infant’s little toe. And on the other hand, folks who associate penis size with status will find this a hostile environment.

What you say about forensics is true–you appear to have overlooked the part where I already conceded that point. I’m sure it was your haste to reach for the measuring tape, and not an actual failure of reading comprehension on your part.

However, what you say about forensics is irrelevant. Nobody is going to be confiscating Google’s hardware and reading the fucking inode tables or anything else. The only subpoena that would survive Google’s appeal would be for selected records from their SMTP and web logs relating to correspondence between the plaintiff and the defendant, and the only forensics done will be to match up the logs with the email addresses, and compare the timestamps with the SMTP headers.

This will be more than sufficient, because the logs are in the custody of Google, which has no interest in the case whatsoever. The logs would be easy to modify to support one side or the other, and there will be no forensics done of the sort that could detect such tampering, but it won’t matter. Google’s disinterest in the case, and our trust in their security, will be sufficient for the court to accept the logs as dispositive.

Radford’s first mistake was trying to get involved with a co-worker, which is just stupid.

Uh, the rest of your points asside, I don’t think this is appropriate – vetting the situations where people can socialize with potential partners is only relevant as far as a given situation has opportunities for harm. What is not appropriate in the workplace is un-solicited familiarity, forcing of social ties that have no place there. Plenty of people have healthy relationships that started in the workplace after appropriate periods of non-worklplace interaction and friendship. Plus the fact that Karen doesn’t seemed to have had a problem with their initial relationship being within the worklplace, but with Ben’s continued harassment afterwards and the burden he placed on their working relationship later on. To be short – with that sentence you’re also saying “Karen was stupid” .. which is all of what BR’s “she was asking for it” defence is about.

On the other issues – thanks for all the expert commenters here, I think it would be interesting to get more interaction between the lawyer reponses, because to us laymen it seems like each lawyer opinion is similarly dismissive of the situation from different standpoints.

On the main issue – the human one: I was in a rather messy (emotionally) divorce that included a lot I am not proud of – during my relationship I did quite a few things (and had things done to me) that were cruel, childish, passive-aggressive and/or purely spiteful. Today I can say I’m happily divorced and my child and ex all get along fine, sharing responsibilities. A lot of what helped us get over this together without tearing our heads (or our kid’s head) off was a lot of mutual owning up – to what we did wrong. The reasons I’m saying this is that there were some things it took me a long time to own up to, to see from the other side and aknowledge “dude, you behaved like shit that time, even though you didn’t mean it that way” and there are some things I’ve had to let go which I know about now, but my ex never owned up to or apologised for.

What Radford is doing sounds a lot to me like the panicy shameful lies used to cover up (a?) particular event(s) that Ben doesn’t want to publicly own up to – perhaps those he knows Karen alluded to in her original post. The “but just next month she was naked in bed with me” photo is the prime example. And his other “she was nasty to me too, so what I did doesn’t count!” excuse is just as invalid. These are exactly the feelings and reactions I had – I couldn’t own up to having behaved like a shitty human being.

Also, I hope Karen doesn’t read this thread – there’s lots of support, but a lot of argument about details of things which must be *very* painful for her. So I’ll end with – lots of support for Karen Stollznow, love and (if appropriate) virtual hugs and tears.

Honestly people, what in the world does the date stamp prove or not prove? What do photos of consensual hanky panky prove or not prove?

Nothing.

Who in the world does not have a friend/relative/self who was involved with someone, had an oh-so-brief reconciliation (booty call? friends with benefits?) and then reconsidered the whole thing?

The arc of a break-up does not have to be: Interest>Infatuation>Lost interest>Break-up>Never see that person ever ever ever again.

FFS: I know of real-live human beings on this planet right now who were the product of a break-up in the making. A one-time “break-up sex” encounter. Didn’t change the break-up ultimately. Just complicated matters.

The photos do not disprove allegations of sexual harassment, no matter when they were or were not taken. The whole time stamp issue is a red herring, pure and simple.

Yeaaargh… but the issue Radford is making is that Karen claimed that after a certain date she asked him to stop his advances towards her, stop communicating with her in this romantic fashion. He is claiming that during this time she herself initiated romantic communications etc., and so she’s lying => fraud / defamation.

You’re right that things are usually not so simple, and that harassment is harassment whenever it happens between other situations, but the idea is supposed to be a claim of intermittent romantic relations vs. “I told him to stop and he didn’t” one.

Dates on the photo are a definite red herring, most debate was on the e-mail timestamps.

Honestly people, what in the world does the date stamp prove or not prove? What do photos of consensual hanky panky prove or not prove?

You’re right: it’s a red herring as far as allegations of harassment go. However, now that Radford has specifically accused Stollznow of lying, he made it relevant: we know for a fact that one of them really IS lying. Establishing which will destroy that person’s credibility. The party that isn’t lying will want to get that into evidence.

HEADS UP, over at Thibeault’s thread we have a report that Radford has started editing his website, specifically removing that sex photo and a paragraph of text relating to it. Yet again, he appears to be covering his tracks.

If you have any sort of archive of Radford’s website, send it to Karen Stollznow or her lawyers. If you have a cached version of that page, Google for software that can pull files from your browser cache and send those on. If you haven’t visited this page yet, consider doing so and making a copy of what you see.

This may or may not be useful to her current case, but it will definitely be appreceated for any counter-suit.

1. Type about:cache in the address bar.
2. Under “Disk Cache Device,” copy the folder path to where Firefox stores your cache entries.
3. Navigate to that folder in Windows Explorer or Finder. The files there will have strange names and no extension, so it can take some time, but you just have to open each one to see if it’s the photo in question.

It’s not quite as easy to find your cache folder in Chrome, but it’s still there. On Windows, assuming you’re using the Default profile (which you are if you haven’t made any other profiles in Chrome), just press Win+R, paste %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache in the Run box, and hit Enter. In OS X, you can find it at /Users/adam/Library/Caches/ (replace ‘adam’ with your username). Basically the method is the same for any browser—all you have to do is find your browser-of-choice’s cache folder, then go digging. (If you’re an Internet Explore or Safari user, take a look at our original post on the topic for detailed instructions.)

HEADS UP, over at Thibeault’s thread we have a report that Radford has started editing his website, specifically removing that sex photo and a paragraph of text relating to it. Yet again, he appears to be covering his tracks.

If you have any sort of archive of Radford’s website, send it to Karen Stollznow or her lawyers. If you have a cached version of that page, Google for software that can pull files from your browser cache and send those on. If you haven’t visited this page yet, consider doing so and making a copy of what you see.

This may or may not be useful to her current case, but it will definitely be appreceated for any counter-suit.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. I went there yesterday. Curiosity got the best of me. Guess I’ll go google how to do that and where to send it to. At least, I guess that’s at least something for going there and feeling like I got covered in slyme.

I’m not convinced. PZ mentioned, “Radford has commissioned an expert in photographic analysis to compare her hand to Stollznow’s hand in other photos, to ‘prove’ that it is her.” I don’t understand why he would he bother commissioning an expert unless 1. There’s a hand in front of a face in all of them and the woman in question is nowhere recognizable or 2. He simply doesn’t have any other pictures. So if intimidation and blackmail was the plan, then maybe BR just shot himself in the foot with this admission. Unrelated: could anyone explain me how to get whitespace between my paragraphs here like all of you do? None of the allowed tags seem to cut it.

I’m not convinced. PZ mentioned, “Radford has commissioned an expert in photographic analysis to compare her hand to Stollznow’s hand in other photos, to ‘prove’ that it is her.” I don’t understand why he would he bother commissioning an expert unless 1. There’s a hand in front of a face in all of them and the woman in question is nowhere recognizable or 2. He simply doesn’t have any other pictures. So if intimidation and blackmail was the plan, then maybe BR just shot himself in the foot with this admission.

I think the implication is that Ratfuck has pictures of Stollznow in which she appears some combination of more recognizably, more visibly naked, and/or engaged in sexual activity, and that he’ll put them out for the world to see if she doesn’t knuckle under.

I think the implication is that Ratfuck has pictures of Stollznow in which she appears some combination of more recognizably, more visibly naked, and/or engaged in sexual activity, and that he’ll put them out for the world to see if she doesn’t knuckle under.

Yes, that’s what I meant with the intimidation / blackmail thing. But it just didn’t seem likely to me to jump through expert picture analysis hoops to recognize someone by a hand on the basis of one picture, if you got plenty other pictures to help recognize someone by, too.

I don’t think you need to bother, Lousy Canuck seems to have been thoroughly examining and collecting data.

Not necessarily. Even if five people turn in the same photo, that’s five separate samples taken at five separate times, which can narrow down when Radford deleted something. There’s also a real danger in everyone going “eh, someone else probably has an archive of it,” and not sending anything in.

I hope that the reason CFI hasn’t fired him yet is that they don’t want him to be able to lump that in with damages that he’s suing Karen for. And that they are standing by to fire him the minute a final decision is made one way or another, because all of his actions are casting their seeming support of him in a terrible light.

Why is everyone taking Ben at his word that these email timestamps were in the investigator’s report? We don’t have access to the report. There may be no discrepancy whatsoever to account for. This entire discussion about log files and inodes could be moot.

You’re all taking it for granted that there’s a dispute over these timestamps. Only ONE person has ever said anything about the timestamps. We’ve not heard anything about them from Karen, Matt, CFI, or the investigators. We haven’t read the report. We can’t see the context. We really have NO IDEA what the hell Ben is talking about. All we have are two PDFs and Ben’s narrative.

Ben could be misinterpreting the report. Ben could be mistaken about the report. Ben could be lying about the report. The dates on the report could be the result of an honest mistake or typo or autocorrect. The dates could’ve been misinterpreted by the investigators. Something could’ve happened when the email server was switched over. Yes, you all know about tech. We’re all very impressed. But you’re also believing ONE eye witness’s interpretation of a dispute. I’m really, really not impressed by that.

This may not mean diddly squat, but from past experience, I can say that Sandoval County, New Mexico is a pretty liberal/progressive area, so there is a greater chance than not the pool of jurors may have a greater degree of sanity and ability to reason relative to other areas of the country, not to mention NM. I don’t know if any data is out there as to how the underlying demographics of an area affects how court cases are determined.

I seem to have a cached copy of the image, but I have no way of turning the cache into an actual image.

Does that mean you can see the image on your own computer?
If so, you should be able to use the PRT SC (Print Screen) button to take a screenshot, and then use your computers basic image edit to paste that screenshot in as a new image and then save it as something like brlegal-browser-cache-screenshot-YYYYMMDD.

You should do the same with the folder where you found the image cache, to show the name of that cache-file which should include some forensically important strings.

Then send your cached file along with the screenshots to Karen’s team.

I don’t think many of us here have trusted anything BR has said about the situation for months.

All these conversations about how and why Karen’s timestamps came to differ from Ben’s INHERENTLY RELY ON BEN’S ACCOUNT that there are discrepancies. You can’t talk about email timestamps without trusting that Ben is accurately relaying information to us about the investigation and the report. Many people here are taking a lot of what Ben has said at face value, and they really, really shouldn’t be doing that.

But it just didn’t seem likely to me to jump through expert picture analysis hoops to recognize someone by a hand on the basis of one picture, if you got plenty other pictures to help recognize someone by, too.

They were previously involved, and this guy likes trophies. I’m willing to bet he has more pictures, unrelated to the disputed one. And I think it’s clear he’s willing to publish them for no reason other than hurting KS. They would have no value for proving anything about the disputed picture.

I mean that looking in chrome://cache, I have a cache that corresponds to the image url. The point is moot now, anyways. I’ve since revisited the site, and the cache updated.

Send it in anyway, hopefully Stollznow can find an expert to handle the conversion. I haven’t been able to confirm if any changes have been made, myself, but I will be able to soon.

Changes have been made. He took some links down and removed some text. For a while, the image was still uploaded to the website, but only accessible through the image url; the only way to access was to type the url directly into the url bar. I was in the middle of trying to get a freezepage of the image since I was having trouble with the cache, but I was literally seconds late.

I don’t know much about the specific allegations KS has made, I avoid reading about that stuff because I can’t handle it. I don’t know what her claims are apart from things repeated places like here. I of course have no idea what the truth is about them or what happened.

I HAVE seen the reaction from BR etc.
I don’t know if he’s unfairly a target of false claims or not.

I CAN tell, though, that regardless, he’s a seriously creepy scumbag.
Given the above and the fact that BR’s actions are the ONLY thing I have to base my opinion of him on, that tells me that the only person ruining his reputation is him.

It’s like watching the Three Stooges and hearing one of them say “I don’t need some woman’s help to make me look like a jerk.”

All right, I’ve been able to verify the changes… sort of. I can say with confidence that four images have been deleted from the site since this morning: KSHandComparison.jpg, KS-hand-crop.jpg, P1010082-copy-2.jpg, Stollznow-hand-from-arrest-pic-crop.jpg. He’s also changed one section of HTML from:

<p>Photographs used to place Karen and me at a San Francisco hotel in April 2010 (and referenced in the photo authentication report) can be viewed here: <a href=”http://benrlegal.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/P1010084.jpg” target=”_blank”>One</a> || <a href=”http://benrlegal.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ClaySt_B.jpg” target=”_blank”>Two</a> || <a href=”http://benrlegal.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ClaySt_C.jpg” target=”_blank”>Three</a> || <a href=”http://benrlegal.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ClaySt_A.jpg” target=”_blank”>Four</a> || <a href=”http://benrlegal.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/P1010082-copy-2.jpg” target=”_blank”>Five</a></p>
<p>If any additional photographic proof is needed that Karen and I shared a bed in mid-2010 (a year after she claims to have cut off all communication with me because of stalking and harassment), I took a photo of us. Her face is obscured because she’s reaching for her hair, but we can match Karen’s <a href=”http://benrlegal.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/KS-hand-crop.jpg” target=”_blank”> right hand as it appears in one of the Club Quarters photographs</a> with her <a href=”http://benrlegal.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Stollznow-hand-from-arrest-pic-crop.jpg” target=”_blank”> right hand as it appeared several months later in police photos taken during her domestic violence arrest in Arvada, Colorado</a>. <a href=”http://benrlegal.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/KSHandComparison.jpg” target=”_blank”>See a side-by-side comparison</a>, especially the mole on her hand just above the wrist, the prominent inward bend of her forefinger, the identical French nail manicure, the prominent oval knuckle pads, and so on.</p>

But, that’s it. So either Jacob Schmidt is mistaken (which I find highly unlikely), or Radford has made multiple edits that website since it went up, presumably due to feedback from his lawyer or from us. He is re-writing history on-the-fly, in an attempt to wiggle away from his own statements.

Dang, looks like I have something stuck in the mod queue. In case it doesn’t pop out, here’s a cut-down version:

All right, I’ve been able to verify the changes… sort of. I can say with confidence that four images have been deleted from the site since this morning: KSHandComparison.jpg, KS-hand-crop.jpg, P1010082-copy-2.jpg, Stollznow-hand-from-arrest-pic-crop.jpg. I also find one deleted HTML snippet, relating to the now-infamous nude photo…

… but, that’s it. So either Jacob Schmidt is mistaken (which I find highly unlikely at this point), or Radford has made multiple edits that website since it went up, presumably due to feedback from his lawyer or from us. He is re-writing history on-the-fly, in an attempt to wiggle away from his own statements.

This is not the action of an innocent man.

I can also say with confidence that two edits have been made, the first on April 2nd, 00:39:14 (UTC), the second on April 3rd at 16:00:26 (UTC).

I’ve been unemployed since mid-December, and it hurts. Nevertheless, I contributed to Dr. Stollznow’s fund, the first day, while it was still less than $8,000 — meaning I didn’t even think about my situation. The more I hear about this, this… thing, the more I think about my daughter, and my daughter-in-law, and their situations, the less I need to worry about mine. So, I gave again.

Folks, PZ, let’s throw the gauntlet down. Dr. Stollznow needed $30,000 just to avoid a default judgement against this putrid sack of shit. Let’s get her $100,000 over the next 10 days so she can go after this pink slime! Folks on the thread prior to this were complaining about how the country’s gone to the toilet with the McCutcheon decision. This is an opportunity to fucking DO something about it, even if indirectly. We can make this world a better place to live. Let’s not let evil succeed because good people did nothing.

So I’ve got a question for y’all, in light of a couple of the comments far above…
Let’s say the following [completely fictitious/hypothetical] scene occurred:
I’m sitting in the UMM cafeteria, and Dr Myers walks by and flings a spoon of raw minced garlic at me, striking me in the shoulder and splattering all over my shirt. I arise and start to protest aloud. I denounce his action as unwarranted and unjust, and as I am making my protestations, I shit my pants. I then grab handfuls of feces and smear it about in my hair.

I then grab handfuls of feces and smear it about in my hair. why do I stink? What is the cause of my noxious odor?

DUH. The shit you smeared into your hair. Are you trying to imply *that* is a perfectly reasonable response to getting some minced garlic flung at you and staining your shirt? If your answer is “Yes”; you must have anger management difficulties.

I thought what Corvus was getting at was that the person in the analogy, in an attempt to call out the person who made him smell bad, ended up making himself smell worse through his own actions.

Or, to put it in non-analogous format, even if Radford were totally in the right and Stollznow was a crazy vindictive such-and-so who lied and fabricated all the allegations against him, the actions he has taken on his own have proven him to be just about as slimy, sleazy, and all-around terrible as the allegations suggested in the first place.

Corvus…
I’ve been reading pharyngular since the early days… that was…what… three blogs ago? Four?
In that time I’ve seen plenty of idiotic arguments and asinine “analogies” posed by some of the most vile people I’ve come across in my life – and I’ve known some very vile people.

Yours is the most pointless and idiotic “question” I can remember in a long time. It’s not even a question, it’s just a pile of wet shit flung at a wall. It makes no sense on its own, and cannot be placed into any context relative to the subject being discussed that suddenly MAKES it make sense.

Or, to put it in non-analogous format, even if Radford were totally in the right and Stollznow was a crazy vindictive such-and-so who lied and fabricated all the allegations against him, the actions he has taken on his own have proven him to be just about as slimy, sleazy, and all-around terrible as the allegations suggested in the first place.

As a sadly departed friend of mine from back in my Usenet days would say: BINGO!

Even if Radford is completely vindicated, turning out to have been the wronged party and being shown to have been behaving as pure as the driven snow with respect to KS, I would still think he’s a skeevy sleaze ball, based solely on his own recent behavior, particularly his posting of those pictures. There is no excuse or justification for that that could change my impression.

*even if* etc. — which is not even stipulated at this time — he still owns the stink of his own shit-smearing.

Robert B. is bitching and moaning about the damage to BRad’s rep, citing this thread as evidence of reputation damage — as far as I’m concerned the defamation/not is miniscule/moot in regards to my opinion of him — he’s showed himself (by his own actions since the accusation) to be an asshole of the highest order, and I will continue to view him as an asshole, and act/react accordingly, until he behaves in a manner to cause me to think otherwise.

I can’t figure out what CFI thinks they’re doing. You’d think that posting revenge porn would be a no-no for any organization, particularly one that relies on public goodwill. I’d love to see that guy’s contract.

Seemed perfectly understandable to me at first reading. It was just a snarky way of saying: even if originally innocent, Radford still smells like shit now, through his own actions.

It’s what everyone else has been saying.

Though at this point I’m not even sure whether for instance mofa was being sarcastic or not. Surely?

@MarcusRanum on “born yesterday”
Dating people on park benches is stupid, dating online is stupid, dating while drunk in bars is stupid (because dating in any circumstance has the potential for harm unless you behave appropriately). What the fuck was your point? No, you didn’t have one.

=8)-DX:
m0fa has been trolling FtB for a while. Based on many of his comments, he appears to align more with the anti harassment policy crowd than the commentariat here (or pretty much any of the bloggers at FtB).

I assume someone will clean up the pitstain shortly, but it bears saying

what we have here is a case of a relationship between two people gone sour.

This is not at all inconsistent with there having been sexual and regular harassment and other boundary-violating, inappropriate behavior on the part of one of those people. In fact, such behaviors are well known for their relationship-souring qualities.

Ha, exactly what Péèzus did with Shermer. Your Dear Leader has the self-awareness of a cabbage.

PZ Myers announced a defamation case against Shermer, stating several times he was going to leave it to the judge, all the while dumping information on the internet rather than leaving it for the judge?

If Shermer really is a serial rapist, why only post it on the internet? Save it for the judge, where it counts

As you’d know, if you were the least bit interested in an honest reckoning, from the very beginning, everybody involved said there was and would be no criminal charges pressed. The (single) accusation (published here) was posted as a warning about Shermer’s MO.

Shermer was gonna sue PZ, remember? There was a defense fund and everything!

Hey, whatever happened with that? (I hear if there’s no suit, Emery Emery and Shermer will split the money for “skeptical projects.” Seven months and counting….)

.

Another Own Goal, Mr. Troll. You might want to find a new hobby–you’re really bad at this. Have you considered model airplanes?

If Shermer really is a serial rapist, why only post it on the internet? Save it for the judge, where it counts.

Radford is the one who made it a legal mater. He is the one who brought judges into it. If he’d only made a blog post stating that Karen Stollznow had wrongfully accused him of harrassment as a warning to other dudes, then that would be more analogous. Then if PZ had made the “If his case is so strong and his evidence irrefutable, why is he posting it on the internet? Save it for the judge, where it counts.” then maybe you’d have a point.

PZ, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you’re a witch-hunting moron

Magic is not real.
Sexual harassment and rape are real. They should be treated seriously. Victims should be believed because that shit happens. A lot. And all too often, there are people like *you* who, through your words and actions, contribute to a society that dismisses victims.

I have no desire to address the rest of your inane comment (I’m sure someone else will though).

How subjective is the term “revenge-pornographer,” legally speaking? Is the identification of pornography (revenge or otherwise) a strictly defined thing? Completely hypothetically, of course, could… for instance… Scout have called Boo Radley such a term if he had taken and disseminating pictures that *she* considered to be “of sexual behavior that are erotic/lewd and are designed to arouse sexual interest”? Or does it depend on some outsider’s judgement of whether a picture can/cannot be called pornographic?

I mean, what criteria would need to be met before Scout, Dill or Jem could legally safely say “Hey Atticus, we suspect that Boo Radley, revenge-pornographer, was the one leaving gifts for us in the tree?”

Just asking for a friend, of course. Wouldn’t want for him or her to call someone a revenge-pornographer without adequate justification.

I for one would like to see our Squidly Overlord use squidification to remove the troll droppings i.e. replace their text with an image of something with tentacles, rather like Chris Clarke used to use bunnification. It would improve the look of the thread and cheer the rest of us up while keeping the comment numbers intact. There must be gazillions of images of such gorgeous organisms floating around this blog’s media library after all these years.

Rey Fox, I presume that the accent marks are used to evade the moderation filter, although whether every word they think is on the filter list actually is on the filter list, well, wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve made assumptions.

Evading the filter is exactly why he does it and he does it because he’s had so many posts eaten by said filter. Because it’s the same damn guy every day. I notice he’s using two different accents there so I’m guessing PZ added some other variant to the filter already.

All these conversations about how and why Karen’s timestamps came to differ from Ben’s INHERENTLY RELY ON BEN’S ACCOUNT that there are discrepancies. You can’t talk about email timestamps without trusting that Ben is accurately relaying information to us about the investigation and the report. Many people here are taking a lot of what Ben has said at face value, and they really, really shouldn’t be doing that.

The “Burn Book” site contains a link to a document claimed to be a copy of an exhibit from CFI’s investigation. Radford also links to what he claims are the original emails and some bizzaro “analysis.” For me, the issue is less about believing Radford’s account than it is dealing with the ramifications of the claim. If those dates are different, there are three possibilities:

1) Dr. Stollznow edited dates of emails from 2008-2010 when they were dating to look like the were sent in 2012.
2) Radford edited emails from 2012 to look like they came from 2008-2010.
3) CFI somehow screwed up when they were going through Dr. Stollznow’s emails.

3 is obviously the most believable because it requires the least dramatic interpretation. 1 and 2, however, basically resolve the case one way or another. If either of them edited emails, they are going to have a tough time getting winning the rest of the case, and there exists the possibility that either google or the university system has a log of the originals and a definitive answer can be attained.

I think you’ve offered a compelling 4th possibility, which is that the evidence presented about the discrepancy is, itself, a bunch of hooey. The fact that Radford would link to a purported exhibit from the CFI investigation without linking the whole investigation is telling. It may be that the emails were barely a factor or even dismissed.

I won’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t “believe” anything Radford says or presents. I think it is worth considering the claims, though. The difference between the forgery claim and claims like, “she sent me a birthday card,” are that even if most of what Radford claims is true, it doesn’t matter. The forgery claim is important for the case and for the believability of the parties, in general.

Put the claws away; Corvus may have made a dumb analogy, but they’re not a ‘pitter. They’ve been unflaggingly supportive of Stollznow in this thread and at Lousy Canuck, and has raised some good points along the way.

Gmail supports IMAP for mailboxes and allows you to import messages from other servers and accounts. It would not even take sophistimacated IT skills to fake backdating a message; all you need to do is fire up thunderbird, IMAP sync your inbox down, drag the message you want to edit to a local folder, exit thunderbird, edit the message, restart thunderbird, and drag the message from the local folder to your gmail account.

I’m not saying anyone in particular did this. But I’m saying anyone could do this.

If you search gmail’s help files there are also directions for importing directly into gmail from other accounts on other servers.

There may also be some synergy between some of those options. For instance 3 and 4. Any errors or inconsistencies in the CFI report, however minor, could be seized upon by someone engaged in anomaly-hunting, cherry-picking and motivated reasoning to support a conclusion not born out by the entirety of the evidence. Then those bits are selectively presented, as people tend to do when trying to win an argument. It doesn’t even require outright thoughtful fraud, just banal narcissism and myopia — though on the question of intentional fraud/misleading, I’m fresh out of benefits of the doubt.

Put the claws away; Corvus may have made a dumb analogy, but they’re not a ‘pitter. They’ve been unflaggingly supportive of Stollznow in this thread and at Lousy Canuck, and has raised some good points along the way.

You know you’re actually right – I was defending his first dumb analogy, then being swayed by the even more dumb second one to believing he doesn’t have his head screwed on right (googling “revenge porn laws” isn’t so hard). Then I looked back at the thread and noticed the posts of his I’d read previously – yeah he has it screwed on ok 8-]. I guess in this kind of discussions, tensions get strung and intentions are read into things.

“Paramornal”? I like it. It’s quite the appropriate term for Radford, especially when used by Horde-members with sniny teeth. Let us all refer to BR as a “paramornal investigator”! Or even a “paramornal instevigator”.

@cubist #463
I’m not sure “pornographer” as an epithet is good. And “paramornal” seems too much like “moronal”. I think “Ben Radford, Creepy Dude™” is more appropriate. I’d suggest “creeper”, but that has undeserved positive Minecraft references.

Also, for discussion: why is “witch-hunt” considered an appropriate label for reactions and criticisms of what a *man* allegedly did? I guess plenty of males were persecuted and executed for “witchcraft” or “sorcery”, but “witch-hunt” is usually taken to refer to certain specific instances of Christian persecution, where the core of the issue was “let’s pretend we can solve our problems by blamingburning some woman we don’t like”.

The only analogy that makes sense is “a claim against someone which is believed to be true whatever evidence is provided.” In that case yes – it would seem to be valid to call some of the reactions here “witch-huntesque” (omg that sounds horrible)… except that the people here have *looked* at the evidence, aren’t talking about some magical claims (sexism and sexual harassment are ubiquitous) and are *fucken discussing the fucken evidence for said fucken claims*!

The analogy would be valid if:
1) Sexual harassment was a thing that didn’t happen, like magic.
2) Ben Radford had done nothing or expressed nothing to show he did such magic.

But in reality it’s more like:
1) Sexual harrassment *is* real.
2) Ben Radford covered himself in occult symbols and started dancing around a burning effigy of Karen has tried to silence, intimidate and further harass KS, showing in words and deeds that he is no stranger to harassing behaviour.

If there’s any “witchhunt”, it’s what BR is doing:
1) The idea that BR could’ve done something wrong is untenable (like magic!)
2) KS’s one article was meant to falsely accuse BR of things he never did, ever, and if so she liked it, and so she must be some evil vindictive lying …

I give up.. I think this analogy is just not appropriate in any situation, unless someone is quoting canon law at a woman.

Trolls be nocturnal cos they can’t stand the scrutiny of broad daylight.

Heh! To extend the pitter’s beloved naturalistic fallacy of evolutionary psychology: People evolved the instinct that doing things that would make your mother/sister/daughter cringe, and that you otherwise wouldn’t do, while they are asleep means it’s OK. What they haven’t yet adapted to the internet, where evidence of “doing things” last for a long time. Luckily, and though their instinct is to protest it, PZ is helping them by deleting their crap and not doxing them.

So, having previously just skimmed the site, I’ve just spent a half an hour reading through the materials there. Most disgusting were the (here oft-discussed) “misdated” e-mails. I read them all, taking 2010 as the year (and BR says the months and days fit), and was disgusted. And also the timeline is especially sickening.

BR’s whole arguments are: “if I had sex with this person on dates X and Y, nothing before that could’ve been abusive.” and “if she wanted to have sex or interact with me on occasion X and Y, nothing before that could’ve been abusive” and “she still had feelings for me on date X, so nothing I did before that could’ve been so bad!”

It’s as if he didn’t aknowledge that people are able (and often required!) to socially interact with people who have harmed them! Come on.. I don’t think this was the case, but there is the well-documented psychology of stockholm syndrome as an extreme here. You have to be either dense or pathologically incapable of self-awareness to think that someone saying ““Lots of love, Karen xxx/ooo” means “you never harmed me in any way”.

And in the timeline it goes into the (mostly irrelevant) information about KS’s relationship with Baxter. BR’s main point there is that KS seems to have behaved in a highly unstable manner. So it seems that BR doesn’t know about the campsite rule. He recognises that Karen was seriously emotionally desperate and unsettled after their relationship, but seems absolutely fine just saying “bitch be crazy”.

Fuck. Radford is going the exactly worst route after *any* relationship: admit no wrong, ignore self in mirror, be a self-righteous ass.

I’ve been wondering why Radford did something this despicable…and this may sound naive, but I am wondering if the indiegogo fund for Karen had panicked him?

Why would anyone make such a boner move…essentially outing himself as a stalker creepazoid…if they were thinking clearly? My guess is that Radford completely underestimated the numbers of quietly skeptical folks who are sick of this shit, and are willing to be part of the fight while being unwilling to expose themselves to the abuse of harassment defenders.

I’m certainly not willing to put myself out there…so I am beyond grateful to Karen for giving me the opportunity to have a voice, however small.

sqlrob, I noticed that later. If I’d actually cared about making it look more legit than the screenshots in the forensic report PDF, I would have gone back and changed or removed that header line. Well done, though, catching the step I missed in my “this is the fastest thing I can do which passes a quick inspection” exercise. The point stands: Gmail will display whatever you tell it to, and an investigator who only has your account credentials can’t say with any certainty that messages in your account came in via SMTP and were never modified via IMAP.

Witch hunt was always gender neutral to me. Sure, the literal witch hunts focused on women, but since then things like the McCarthy era the term has become more general.

Not being USAian, I didn’t think of the McCarthy era, you make a good point. So would the general meaning be then my: “a claim against someone which is believed to be true whatever evidence is provided.”

I still think it’s inappropriate to use when dealing with these kinds of cases. Sexual harassment =/= magic (or a claim without evidence). The use of “witch-hunt” aimed at Karen is basically “she lied about everything and made outlandish claims which could never be true”. So that’s highly inappropriate, just as it would be to use it against Ben. I think BR has behaved horribly, not because I think all he’s said were lies and made up claims about impossible events, but because his actions and behaviours are despicable *even when taken at face value*.

Getting everything consistent is hard. And if you did delete those headers, it could make the mail suspect if the domain has been using it for a while and you’re claiming that it was sometime after they started using it.

That… that was kind of the point. Square didn’t exist in 1997 either. So a message in Gmail with a date of 1997, sent to my gmail account from Square, is clearly forged. And yet Flashback was claiming that it wasn’t possible to forge the date so that Gmail would display a fake date, or if it was possible, they’d never heard of or seen it done.

Well yes, but on a glance the variable “t=1396469397” in the signature most people would need a calculator at least to establish that should be the number of seconds since the start of Unix time. And the Flashback investigators weren’t even careful enough to inspect the headers.

Firstly the statement x, y or z =/= magic is quite meaningless because magic does not exist. Yet your argument seems to be based on it. It makes me wonder whether you understand what sexual harassment is.

Let’s start with the idea that sexual harassment is a specialised form of bullying. It is also an abuse of power – either the bully does have power or he has better access to the advantages of power so that he can get his case on the record, call in favours or keep vast numbers ignorant of the truth and thus pliable, willing to do his bidding. In this sense what we are discussing now is a pretty good match with the McCarthy witch-hunt – which I am old enough to remember, though not directly involved.

If we are clear about that then let us move on. This harassment, though it has a sexual dimension and back-story, is nothing to do with some fourteenth century knight errant in a far-off land taking out his battered lute to sing songs of an unattainable lady he once glanced at a joust and has “loved’ ever since. Neither romantic drivel nor bygone mores will help anyone understand what is going on.

The closer parallel – closer even than McCarthy – is with workplace bullying. That, too, can include whispering campaigns – the “nut and slut” dimension – both within a workplace (so that support is denied) and more widely so that the person bullied is less able to get a job matching zir talents if leaving becomes the only option. There’s also setting someone up to fail, preferably in public. There’s overloading anyone trying to understand with excessive and deliberately confusing detail. There’s the setting of traps so that whichever way someone react you can berate them for it. There are petulant displays of faux emotion – “it’s not fair to accuse me!” with all the self-awareness of Charlie Brown in a Peanuts cartoon. And so forth.

I know neither of the two main characters in this saga. I am several timezones away. I am really too old to care but what does make me mad is people who split hairs on the basis of their own lack of knowledge, as you did about the term “witch-hunt”. We’re on the weekend so perhaps, thanks to google, you’ll have time to read up on the social, political and sometimes quasi-scientific struggles which under-pinned, have always underpinned, witch-hunts.

They are best understood as occurring at points where power is about to shift / has just shifted and, perhaps, as the last stand of those whose unchallenged access to power is slipping away. How far is that true in this case? I dunno! Do you?

I realize this is a bit late, but a comment I noticed earlier could use some elaboration, hopefully without me having to go to a site that will slyme my orbs too badly.

Goodbye Enemy Janine @ 28
And, yes, this charming gentleman has called on his friends at AVfM.

I noticed the link went to a familiar villainous handle on twitter. I just don’t want to have to read something disgusting to know, but I’m curious. Is it Radford that has specifically sent a shout-out to AVfM, or that Mykeru, or what? I’d like to know the relations between the MRM and the Pit without having to get stinky in the process, & espesh if BR has open ties to them.

IMO, and based on a fair bit of historical reading, “witch-hunts” tend to target outspoken convention-breakers, regardless of gender. It is an extreme example of status-quo normativity-policing via institutionalised bullying with elite social support. The convention-breakers are by definition outsiders, and outsiders don’t get to lead witch-hunts.

Sexual harassers are not, sadly, convention-breakers. Traumatising, marginalising and trivialising others via the shared social fictions surrounding sexual harassment has long been one of the perquisites of those privileged by the status quo.

The convention that Stollznow is breaking is that of silent suffering regarding the injustice of the status quo with respect to sexism and sexual harassment in the workplace. This status quo relies upon establishing plausible deniability via the ‘nutty and slutty’ and/or the ‘scorned and vindictive’ smears, and historically has worked extremely well, because hey, ‘bitchez ain’t shit’ (including the cases where some males have been cast as ‘bitchez’). It also helps that harassers tend to be experts in targeting those whose personalities make them already liable to be perceived as outsiders in one way or another.

Stollznow may quite possibly be a rather difficult person for others to deal with in multiple ways. That makes her rather more likely to be targeted for harassment and bullying generally than somebody who is mostly considered congenial/likeable. Being ‘difficult’ doesn’t make workplace harassment/bullying justified.

For me, every single datum presented by Radford to smear Stollznow simply reinforces the stereotyped perceptions whereby a sexual predator would consider her to be a viable target in the first place. His arguments rely upon ‘conventional wisdom’ based upon misogynist myths about the unreliability of women’s testimony in general, and I for one require rather more than that.

I submitted this once, and I’m not getting a message about the comment being in moderation, so I’m submitting it again. Please delete if this comment ends up as a duplicate.
* * *
Maureen Brian #480, just wanted to appreciate your comment.

IMO, and based on a fair bit of historical reading, “witch-hunts” tend to target outspoken convention-breakers, regardless of gender. It is an extreme example of status-quo normativity-policing via institutionalised bullying with elite social support. The convention-breakers are by definition outsiders, and outsiders don’t get to lead witch-hunts.

Sexual harassers are not, sadly, convention-breakers. Traumatising, marginalising and trivialising others via the shared social fictions surrounding sexual harassment has long been one of the perquisites of those privileged by the status quo.

The convention that Stollznow is breaking is that of silent suffering regarding the injustice of the status quo with respect to sexism and sexual harassment in the workplace. This status quo relies upon establishing plausible deniability via the ‘nutty and slutty’ and/or the ‘scorned and vindictive’ smears, and historically has worked extremely well, because hey, ‘bitchez ain’t shit’ (including the cases where some males have been cast as ‘bitchez’). It also helps that harassers tend to be experts in targeting those whose personalities make them already liable to be perceived as outsiders in one way or another.

Stollznow may quite possibly be a rather difficult person for others to deal with in multiple ways. That makes her rather more likely to be targeted for harassment and bullying generally than somebody who is mostly considered congenial/likeable. Being ‘difficult’ doesn’t make workplace harassment/bullying justified.

For me, every single datum presented by Radford to smear Stollznow simply reinforces the stereotyped perceptions whereby a sexual predator would consider her to be a viable target in the first place. His arguments rely upon ‘conventional wisdom’ based upon misogynist myths about the unreliability of women’s testimony in general, and I for one require rather more than that.

Firstly the statement x, y or z =/= magic is quite meaningless because magic does not exist

Which is why I appended “or a claim without evidence” after it. Of course magic doesn’t exist. I’m not really sure how you “disagree” with me – I think I understand perfectly well what sexual harassment is and don’t really see what your comment is trying to explain (knights and lutes???)

As for “witchunt” – this word has been thrown about by trolls and Radford defenders (as in “PZ/Karen have started a witchunt”). Do you disagree with me that usage is wrong? If you agree then we don’t disagree on much, just you’re using the word a bit differently. Do you think then that it’s valid to say “Ben has started a witch-hunt against Karen”? I don’t, and I think I explained why. The power (im)balances behind harassment and bullying don’t change that – your comment veered off the topic after that to “explain” pretty standard stuff I agree with, which still doesn’t really constitute a discussion of word usage.

What “romantic drivel” are you talking about? I had some comments here about my own experiences and how I think they relate to the case, trying to understand, not defend the actions of Ben as well as express how frustrated this whole thing makes me feel. If you think my experiences are invalid – fine, duly noted and I won’t talk to you about them.